Q: my iPad updated to iOS 10 without my consent

The iOS upgrade/updates get pushed to iDevices, but the end user still has to initiate the installation.

The iOS upgrade/update will just sit inside your iDevice until you tap on something to tell it to, actually install or not!

Somehow you managed to do this.

You should have received a small popup window asking you if you want to install the iOS 10 Upgrade Now, Tomorrow or Remind Me Later.

Did you ever see this popup message appear on your iPad's screen?

Yup, MichelPM is correct. The download is automatic but it will NEVER install until the user manually agree to install. Somehow someone has agreed to the request to install iOS 10. It may be you or someone else.

There's a small window of opportunity to go back to previous iOS if Apple is still signing it but I think that opportunity has passed. There's no going back.

While you may feel they are not correct, they are. The iOS will not update without some user intervention. There is something that pops up when you see a notice about the update, and that allows you to put it off, or to update overnight when connected to power, but that requires you to key in your passcode.

Apple does not support downgrading, but there is a short window that is open and a user could downgrade if they still had the ipsw. However, it was just reported on another site that Apple has just closed the window for downgrading to iOS 9.3.5.

If you feel there should be a different method to notifying users, then you need to transmit that to Apple. That would be done on their feedback page here, http://www.apple.com/feedback and then click on the appropriate subject area.

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All I can say is that this isn't supposed to happen and it shouldn't happen, ever!

I am using a large iPad Pro and 6th gen iPod Touch.

Both are still on iOS 9.3.5 and nothing has auto downloaded to any of my iDevices.

For your future reference there is a way to temporarily remove an iOS upgrade/update so it can't download at all.

Go into the Settings App, General Settings panel.

In the right hand column, tap Storage and iCloud Usage.

At the top in the first block of 3 panels where it is titled at the top of this block Storage, tap the panel that says Manage Storage.

A list of every app will generate itself.

Once this list stops generating, look through this list until you see something like iOS 10.x.x in this list.

Tap on the arrow at the far right on that iOS 10.x.x panel.

It will bring you to another screen that will allowing you to completely delete/remove the entire iOS upgrade/update.

This removal/deletion of an iOS upgrade/update is not permanent and may return at anytime when the iOS upgrade/update at some point will get re-pushed to your iDevice, where you can simply perform this procedure, again.

uamaral wrote:

 

Both my wife's and mine's autoupdated without any of us doing anything. The iPads shows this message suggesting to update to iOS 10 but I always selected later. The curious thing is that both of the iPads "chose" to update simultaneously  without any warning at all. When we woke up, the iPads were in iOS 10.0.2 already.

I still think you touch the wrong button but ok, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I've never seen iOS shoved down my throat as far as installation is concerned. As for the download part, yeah, that always happens automatically when the device is charging and connected to the internet. That's why I block access to Apple iOS update servers on my WiFi router.

uamaral wrote:

 

I only update when the new OS has already been rolling and most of the bugs have already been addressed. Not this time. I just feel frustrated that Apple chose to pursue this path. Even these annoying popups should not be there. Once I selected later, there should be no reminds at all. They should put a "do not remind me" and that's it. Instead they keep doing these popups? Could it be that the user might get so annoyed that s/he would just give up and update?

It is not in Apple's best interest to stop nagging users to update iOS. I'm not surprised that there's no way to disable that nag. They're betting on either users making a mistake (tapping the wrong button to install) or giving in to the nag. You can always delete the fully downloaded iOS package as MichelPM says or block access to mesu.apple.com (which is what I do).