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Block the "Upgrade to Tahoe" alerts and System Settings indicator
* Jan 17 '26Jan 17 '26
* 14 Comments
* Apple Universe, Mac OS X Hints, macOS, Terminal
Based on some comments on my Mastodon post, this only works due to a
bug in macOS 15.7.3! The 90 day period isn't supposed to be a rolling
date, but 90 days from release date. So it should have no impact...but
it does, so I hope Apple doesn't fix the bug.
Although I have to have a machine running macOS Tahoe to support our
customers, I personally don't like the look of Liquid Glass, nor do I
like some of the functional changes Apple has made in macOS Tahoe.
[upgrade_ta]So I have macOS Tahoe on my laptop, but I'm keeping my
desktop Mac on macOS Sequoia for now. Which means I have the joy of
seeing things like this wonderful notification on a regular basis.
Or I did, until I found a way to block them, at least in 90 day
chunks. Now when I open System Settings - General - Software Update,
I see this:
[upgrade_st]
The secret? Using device management profiles, which let you enforce
policies on Macs in your organization, even if that "organization" is
one Mac on your desk. One of the available policies is the ability to
block activities related to major macOS updates for up to 90 days at
a time (the max the policy allows), which seems like exactly what I
needed.
Not being anywhere near an expert on device profiles, I went looking
to see what I could find, and stumbled on the Stop Tahoe Update
project. The eventual goals of this project are quite impressive, but
what they've done so far is exactly what I needed: A configuration
profile that blocks Tahoe update activities for 90 days.
I first tried to get things working by following the Read Me, but
it's missing some key steps. After some fumbling about, I managed to
get it working by using these modified instructions:
1. Clone the repo and switch to its directory in Terminal; run the
two commands as shown in the project's Read Me:
$ git clone https://github.com/travisvn/stop-tahoe-update.git
$ cd stop-tahoe-update
2. Set all the scripts to executable (not in the instructions):
$ chmod 755 ./scripts/*.sh
3. Create and insert two UUIDs into the profile (not in the
instructions). To do this, use your favorite text editor to edit
the file named deferral-90days.mobileconfig in the profiles
folder. Look for two lines like this:
PayloadUUIDREPLACE-WITH-UUID
You need to replace that text with two distinct UUIDs; the
easiest way to do that is to run uuidgen twice in Terminal, then
copy and paste each UUID, replacing each REPLACE-WITH-UUID text
with the UUID. Save the changes and quit the editor, unless you
want to make the following optional change...
4. Optional step: I didn't want to defer normal updates, just the
major OS update, so I changed the Optional (set to your taste)
section to look like this:
forceDelayedSoftwareUpdates
This way, I'll still get notifications for updates other than the
major OS update, in case Apple releases anything further for
macOS Sequoia. Remember to save your changes, then quit the
editor.
5. Run the script as described in the project's Read Me:
./scripts/install-profile.sh profiles/deferral-90days.mobileconfig
When run, you'll see output in Terminal indicating that you're
not done yet:
Installing profile: profiles/deferral-90days.mobileconfig
profiles tool no longer supports installs. Use System Settings Profiles to add configuration profiles.
Done. You may need to open System Settings - Privacy & Security - Profiles to approve.
You'll also get an onscreen alert saying basically the same
thing.
6. To finish the installation, open System Settings and click on the
Profile Downloaded entry in the sidebar. This will take you to a
screen showing the profile you just added. Double-click on that
profile, and a dialog appears showing the settings; here's how
mine looked, reflecting the changes I made to remove minor
updates from the policy:
[approve_pr]
Click the Install button, which will lead you to Yet Another
Dialog; again click Install and you'll finally be done. Quit and
relaunch System Settings, and you should see a message like mine
at the top of the Software Update panel.
As I've just done all this today, I'm not sure exactly what happens
in 90 days. I imagine I may be notified that the policy has expired,
or maybe I'll just see a macOS Tahoe update notification. Either way,
you can reinstall the policy again by just running the
install-profile.sh command again. Alternatively, and to make things
much simpler, here's what I've done...
I copied my modified profile (the deferral-90days.mobileconfig file
in the Profiles folder) to one of my utility folders, so I could
remove the repo as I won't need it any more. Then I looked at the
install script, which tries to install the profile using the profiles
command, and if that fails, it then opens the profile to install it.
In Sequoia, you can't use profiles to install a profile, so only the
open part of the command is needed.
Once I figured out I only needed to use the open command, I added a
simple alias in my .zshrc configuration file:
# Reinstall the no-Tahoe 90 day policy
alias notahoe='open "/path/to/deferral-90days.mobileconfig"; sleep 2; open "x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.configurationprofiles"'
Now I just have to type notahoe every 90 days, and the profile will
be reinstalled, and System Settings will open to the profiles panel,
where a few clicks will finish activating the installed profile.
We'll see how that goes in April :).
I am so much happier now, not being interrupted with the Tahoe update
notification, and not having the glaring red "1" on the System
Settings icon.
Related Posts:
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* It's been quiet around here lately...
* A full history of macOS (OS X) release dates and rates
* A simple AppleScript to reveal System Settings' anchors
* The macOS' version of the cp Unix command won't create links
* Create macOS automations using a little-known app
14 thoughts on "Block the "Upgrade to Tahoe" alerts and System
Settings indicator"
1. [b507f6]
Steven Woolgar Jan 17 '26 at 12:15 pm
Reply
Thank you..
2. [b141b5]
Adam Selby Jan 17 '26 at 1:10 pm
Reply
This will only defer an update for 90 days **from the release
date**. You can see a table of deferral dates in the [SOFA](
https://sofa.macadmins.io/release-deferrals) project.
You will soon see macOS 26.0 (and 26.0.1) as 90 days have already
passed since its release date. On January 31st, you will see
26.1, and so on.
3. [3c2632]
Ronin Jan 20 '26 at 10:11 pm
Reply
Great find Adam. If I interpret what you are saying and from
personal experience:
1. I NEVER received the forced / heavy handed / Persistant Nag /
Red Bubble until 26.2
2. Ran the deferment today, so if I interpret this, I am good
until March 11th
3. Chances are good there will be a 26.2.x or 26.3 within the
next 90 days, so by this logic re-running it against say 26.3
extends again. Correct?
4.
1. [b141b5]
Adam Selby Jan 22 '26 at 4:37 pm
Reply
I support and manage Macs in the enterprise world, so I'm
quite familiar with deferral profiles (for better or worse).
Historically, there have been bugs with deferrals not being
honored with the heavy handed or notification-driven upgrade
reminders.
There is no deferment to run, really. It's a setting enforced
by Configuration Profile, which is always set and active. Any
new OS update or upgrade will be deferred for 90 days, as
long as that profile is installed.
5. [faf23e]
igre Jan 21 '26 at 2:31 pm
Reply
I NEVER received the forced /
6. [faf23e]
spiele Jan 26 '26 at 10:26 am
Reply
I NEVER received the forced /
7. [840b24]
Eli Mehler Feb 5 '26 at 3:02 am
Reply
I just stumbled upon this website at like 5:55 am on a school day
and man is it interesting this is a cool website although I dont
use Mac I have a iPhone and understand the struggles I myself
updated to ios 26 cause I'm a big frugiter aero fan and the UI
reminds me of it but some people like the current design and
that's fair apples this is pretty crappy
8. [93c059]
Fred Feb 14 '26 at 2:51 pm
Reply
Thanks for turning me on to the stop-tahoe-update project!
Luckily I am still on 15.7.3, but I see that as of 3 days ago
Apple released 15.7.4.
While I would normally embrace the security update (while
avoiding Tahoe), due to the nature of this exploit (if you can
call it that) being a bug in 15.7.3, I'm leery about upgrading to
15.7.4.
I ran through your steps and I can confirm that this did block
the nagging to update to 26.2, but now I'm being nagged to
upgrade to 15.7.4. *Sigh*
9. [aab6ab]
DrChou Feb 20 '26 at 8:49 am
Reply
Solved in this video;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrNJSIywjnY
No more updates or update notifications.
It works and its easy.
10. [817542]
Dark Nova Feb 25 '26 at 3:11 am
Reply
helllo i am Dark nova
11. [ca871b]
ER Feb 27 '26 at 12:49 pm
Reply
This is a great tutorial thanks! Saw this on Daring Fireball.
Worked great for me, I only needed to make the change to the
profile file to set:
forceDelayedSoftwareUpdates
The install shell script already takes care of generating UUID's
and finds the profile location so I only needed to run:
./scripts/install-profile.sh and then go to profiles in System
Settings to activate it.
12. [b45cae]
magic Feb 27 '26 at 2:40 pm
Reply
Is there a way to continue to get Sequoia OS and app updates, but
not see the Tahoe-specific updates that Apple uses to trick
people into upgrading, like the Safari 26.3 update? Seriously
what is wrong with these people?
13. [610d1e]
Michael Feb 28 '26 at 4:44 am
Reply
THANK YOU
Now, how do I do this on my iPhone??
14. [1e006f]
paul Feb 28 '26 at 2:05 pm
Reply
This seems to have worked.
As a timesaver you can run uuidgen within vi and copy/paste the
UUID into the file. At the command prompt (the : bottom left),
type a ! and the command (in this case type !uuidgen) and it will
return a shiny new UUID. Or you can simply run it twice in
Terminal and append it to the file:
uuidgen >> profiles/deferral-90days.mobileconfig
uuidgen >> profiles/deferral-90days.mobileconfig
and then just copy/paste them into position from the end of the
file.
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