In my case, auto-updates for the OS and apps are disabled. I have my system set to check for updates and install security responses, but explicitly not update anything else. And this was my configuration under Ventura as well:
You can wipe the system, install an older macOS release and then use Migration Assistant to put back all your stuff. But I have neither the time nor energy to do all that and be without my Mac for the better part of a day.
That’s easier. Apple maintains a page that has special magic links to older macOS installers. So you can use the Ventura link to download (via the App Store) a Ventura installer and run that. I actually did that several months ago to upgrade my Big Sur system to Ventura after Sonoma had already gone live.
You can easily find this page (if you lose the link) by searching for “macOS installers”. It was the first hit on Duck Duck Go and Google (but was the second hit after a link to Parallels Desktop when searching from Bing).
Ouch. that’s an epic fail by Apple to let a bug like this out. It’s even worse if someone intentionally coded it.
Has anyone made contact with Apple? It might be worthwhile to open a call with Apple Support and coach it as “how to I downgrade” and explain to them that “I’m only in this situation because your software decided to upgrade itself without my permission”.
I had a situation last year where macOS was mounting snapshots of Time Machine backups continually and was trying to find out if this was a bug or not. I was actually able to talk to a human and explain the situation to them. They actually took the time to call in higher level support resources. All of this and I didn’t even have an Apple Care contract… Might be worth a phone call - and if they bite, at least you get satisfaction of letting them know that there’s a pretty severe problem out there.
I have a mac that’s on Ventura via OCLP. The OCLP app popped up today and said it had discovered that I was downloading Sonoma and wanted to download something in preparation for the update. I thought the app just was buggy, so I refused. A bit later, the notification from Apple popped up. I hit the X and checked if something was going on. Nothing happened.
I wonder @Shamino@blm and @kat634e do you run as admin user or regular? I am regular and have never had the OS installed before I confirm with admin password.
I’m always logged in as a non-admin user. And no, it didn’t ask for authentication.
But I don’t recall the system asking me for authentication for point-release updates in the past either. I know it never asks when updating App Store apps.
I am running as an admin user. It didn’t ask for authentication, and I don’t recall it ever having done so for OS updates/upgrades, but maybe that’s because I am an admin user (although if that’s the case, that’s bad security on Apple’s part). But then, it’s never tried to auto-upgrade (or update) my OS before either…
I did exactly that in response to a Upgrade to Sonoma alert (“X” button to dismiss the notification.) Walked away from my computer came back and an alert "
“Restarting Your Computer
Your computer needs to restart to
install updates”
I found multiple references to this file in install.log: “MSU_UPDATE_23C71_patch_14.2.1”
However I can’t find it. Clearly if I restart I’m screwed. Anyone knew how to stop it at this point? I’m running Monterey. I’ve already backed out Sonoma once. It was a major PITA!
I have seen complaints about this for many years. Before at work I supported 30 to 40 macs and had several mac servers running. This last 2 1/2 years I have been a pensioner and are having 6 macs doing different things. Never happened to me, it would be great to know why. Am I doing something special or not, or is it just random?
Lets hope the file you are looking for contains 14.2.1. In terminal as admin try:
sudo find / -name "*14.2.1*" # This will look for any file with some text before and after 14.2.1.
and sudo find / -name "*14.2.1" # This will look for any file with some text before 14.2.1
Thanks for all the promising command lines, but it all went to /dev/null. With Mr. Templeman’s help (FindAnyFile), I did find “/System/Volumes/Update” with close to 2GB of files with timestamps ~when this all started.
So, I ask you, having explained to a 2nd tier Apple Support person what we’ve encountered (clicking notification cancel buttons approving them, etc.), would you trust him when he says just click the cancel on that restart notification? (Pay no attention to that update lurking hidden in a volume nested in /Volumes/my-hd/System/Volumes. OK (IF that worked), so what about that storage being eaten by a hidden volume, - oh posh, if you going to be a baby delete it. I had to demonstrate during screen sharing that no, you can not “sudo rm” anything in there… fairly sure not even w/ SIP disable, which of course requires a restart, and another roll of the dice.
Success (only wasted my whole afternoon and most of my evening). I don’t know if this is what really fixed it, but it “appears” fixed:
I gave up, turned off the machine. Turned it on straight into Recovery Mode. Turned off SIP. Rebooted.
Lo and behold, it did not install Sonoma, and w/ SIP disabled I could delete all that /System/Volumes/Update crap. Someone is going to tell me “Oh, No! That stuff is needed…” Well, not so far, F’it.
Sorry for those who actually have to “roll back!” Yes, it can be done, but anyone who tells you it’s easy hasn’t tried it.
;~}
These are all Intel Macs? Pretty sure Apple Silicon absolutely requires you to enter a password in the GUI to do this (just ask all those enterprise admins!).
I am going to risk unpopularity a little bit by saying that while I am appalled that even advanced users including me (me!!!) are legitimately being tricked into doing the upgrade, to be fair (to a $3B corporation) I actually found the process very slick, indeed. I mean, the downloads are smaller, and the experience of upgrading and post-setup is indeed very “update-like”. In that regard, and now that I’m here, I find it easier to make myself at home with, again, it must be said, fairly minimal effort on my part. Obviously none of this is to excuse this misfeature, if that is indeed what it is, or the bugs I’m running into, like the VMware Fusion + VoiceOver VM shutdown bug. That’s why we should have control over upgrades. I’m just fortunate this time, in that things have been pretty painless so far and there hasn’t been anything, apart from that one bug, that makes me want to roll back.
Nope, 1st gen Mac Studio Ultra here. After I warned a friend, his M1 laptop tried it last evening. And he had turned off its WiFi to prevent it. It apparently turned WiFi back on itself.
What I find a bit weird is the timing. Why now, exactly? 14.2.1 was released Dec 19, so why are we only now seeing this push? Is it getting any currency elsewhere, any other reporting? The last time something like this happened it was a surprise, but not a mystery, because usually the update had been kicked off, even if by accident (for instance, just accidentally clicking the button to update and having no means to cancel once started, or using the softwareupdate command line program to perform an install of all updates automatically).
I was interested to see your post because I had a very similar experience recently. I was running Ventura on my iMac Pro end kept getting these annoying “upgrade” notifications, but I definitely didn’t want Sonema because it’s so buggy. Sometimes I leave the Mac on overnight when I’m copying large volumes of data (translation agency).
One morning I came to the office and found I had Sonema installed. I did absolutely nothing to trigger that!
In the meantime I have nuked the hard disk and reinstalled Ventura.
Curious, that was exactly my settings too. My wife’s laptop, which had everything unchecked, has not attempted to do this. What were the settings of other victims?
The behavior seems to be more like what I might expect from “Download new updates when available” being checked?
Hmm, I upgraded to Sonoma on my own from Ventura on a 2018 intel mini. Fortunately everything seems to work (so far). I haven’t had an accidental or forced upgrade yet since I started with MacOS in 2018.
Those are my settings too. I wouldn’t expect “Download…” being checked to install the update, just to download it, so if I did do an update, it would go faster as I’d already downloaded it. But unless I explicitly did an update, the downloaded update would just sit there.
And for the record, I’m on an Intel Mac running the latest Monterey.
