Hi. Every so often a notification from the Apple store pops up on my screen (right in front of whatever I'm working on) asking me to Upgrade to OS X El Capitan. I'm able to click "Not Now" and get rid of it but I'd like to stop it from popping up altogether. Is there a way? (I have Software Update set to check manually.)
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Digital Audio Recording
This solution was posted at Macintouch a while back:
A couple of years ago, Apple released a software update for 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) systems called "Mac App Store Update 1.0". This had a somewhat vague description about improving the App Store.
One of its features is that it installs a "noticeboard" mechanism on 10.6 and 10.7 systems, which periodically checks with Apple to see if there are any messages to display. If there are any messages, they appear as an alert in the middle of the screen. 10.8 had a similar mechanism added, but it was implemented differently and using Notification Center to display the message. The equivalent of the 10.8 implementation is built in to 10.9 and later systems.
Apple was originally using this to push notices about upgrading to the latest OS X (which was Mavericks at that point), at a rate which felt like about once a month. I haven't been paying close attention to the pattern, but I have some Macs still running older systems, and my gut feeling is that Apple have dialled back the rate of notices appearing since the mechanism was introduced.
The mechanism has nothing to do with Software Update or App Store checks for updates, and there is no user setting to disable it.
On 10.6 and 10.7 systems, this should disable it for the current user:
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.noticeboard.plist
You enter that in Terminal.
This solution was posted at Macintouch a while back:
A couple of years ago, Apple released a software update for 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) systems called "Mac App Store Update 1.0". This had a somewhat vague description about improving the App Store.
One of its features is that it installs a "noticeboard" mechanism on 10.6 and 10.7 systems, which periodically checks with Apple to see if there are any messages to display. If there are any messages, they appear as an alert in the middle of the screen. 10.8 had a similar mechanism added, but it was implemented differently and using Notification Center to display the message. The equivalent of the 10.8 implementation is built in to 10.9 and later systems.
Apple was originally using this to push notices about upgrading to the latest OS X (which was Mavericks at that point), at a rate which felt like about once a month. I haven't been paying close attention to the pattern, but I have some Macs still running older systems, and my gut feeling is that Apple have dialled back the rate of notices appearing since the mechanism was introduced.
The mechanism has nothing to do with Software Update or App Store checks for updates, and there is no user setting to disable it.
On 10.6 and 10.7 systems, this should disable it for the current user:
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.noticeboard.plist
You enter that in Terminal.
If the above doesn't work, download the installer and quit it.
Thanks for the explanation. Since my initial post, I did some more research and came across mention of com.apple.noticeboard.plist (included in your Terminal command) which I found in /Library/Preferences. I opened it and found reference to the El Capitan notification (dated yesterday). That was actually the only item listed. What I did was to create a folder for the plist file and put the file into the folder, leaving it in Preferences. I thought that might stop the notifications, or will a new plist file be generated w/ the next notification?
If I need to use the Terminal command, should I substitute Preferences for LaunchAgents? I'm running Snow Leopard and my LaunchAgents folder had 0 items in it (that I could see).
Eric, I'm not sure what specific installer you're referring to, the Mac App Store Update 1.0?
kahjot, sorry, I didn't check thoroughly enough and did find another com.apple.noticeboard.plist file in /System/Library/LaunchAgents/. I also found a post where they suggested removing or hiding the noticeboard application (and the plist file) and was wondering what you thought of that solution. Or is using Terminal a neater way to stop the popups?
The El Capitan installer.
Okay. I follow now. Thanks.
You are welcome.
I just used the Terminal method; it works.
Is there a Terminal command to restore functionality to Noticeboard should I ever want to use it?
stopmotion wrote:
Is there a Terminal command to restore functionality to Noticeboard should I ever want to use it?
No idea — my Terminal-Fu is weak. Perhaps entering:
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.noticeboard.plist
might work?
I tried this, but it said "Nothing found to unload".
If you have moved that plist file into a folder, that terminal command won't find it because the file path doesn't include name of the folder. If you put the file back where it was, the terminal command should work.
Turn off El Capitan notification?
