Oliver Haslam on May 29, 2020, 8:03 pm

macOS 10.15.5 Kills Ability To Ignore Future macOS Update Notifications

Apple is making it more difficult to avoid macOS update notifications after the release of macOS 10.15.5 and Security Update 2020-003. Previously, users were able to prevent notifications from bugging them but that is no longer possible.

Apple noted as much in its macOS 10.5.5 release notes, saying that it was killing off a Terminal command that previously hid updates.

– Major new releases of macOS are no longer hidden when using the softwareupdate(8) command with the –ignore flag

This change also affects macOS Mojave and macOS High Sierra after installing Security Update 2020-003.

Previously, users were able to run the “softwareupdate –ignore “macOS Catalina” command to prevent being bugged about new updates in the Dock and System Preferences icon. As of recent updates that no longer works. In fact, Apple even warns users who try to run it that it will be going away completely in a future update.

Ignoring software updates is deprecated.
The ability to ignore individual updates will be removed in a future release of macOS.

Apple obviously wants people to update to newer versions of macOS wherever possible and this latest move is a good way to do that. Still, many people will be irritated by Apple’s stance here and they’ll have to either update or get used to seeing the notification badge forever.