I have absolutely had it up to here with the iphone and ipad upgrade nagging. I am current with the latest ios 17 and I’m just not ready to go to 18. Everything is working perfectly and I’m satisfied where I am. I have turned off all automatic updates, downloads, whatever setting I can find but the notifications keep coming! And there is apparently no way to turn off the red icon badge. What the heck has happened to Apple?
It is my phone and my ipad. I have no financial or personal data on them. It should be my choice when to effing upgrade. Or at least give me the opportunity to turn off the nagging. If someone wants to read my boring emails or texts, whatever. I’m so sorry for this rant on a holiday weekend, but I am ready to blow my top.
To all of you savvy and mystical technical sages out there, what can be done?
I have posted a similar request on a user group email list and no one had a solution, I’ve also searched online and gave up. I just ignore any Settings notifications in i/ipadOS, there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn them off like you can with so many other apps. I think you can swipe on them to make the Notification itself disappear but it will always come back.
Also on my Macs, various OSes, for months I have been getting persistent Notifications that a couple of items aren’t syncing with iCloud. Although I don’t use the things mentioned at all, and have syncing with iCloud for them turned off.
Swiping away the notification or tapping the X often makes the Settings window open up to the applicable page where I can turn the undesired features on, which adds to the annoyance.
So um, sorry not to be able to help solve this issue, but do know others are with you in frustration, which I hope is some consolation.
Just to clarify: even on macOS you cannot really get rid of the badges. You can delay the nagging far into the future (indefinitely if you like). And if you replace System Settings in the dock with an alias to it you will hide the badge, but to my knowledge there is still no way to permanently get rid of that *%!# badge.
It’s really bad design. And you’re absolutely jutified to be annoyed about it. But as a recent thread on the topic concluded, this is where we stand today. And as long as Apple doesn’t put their users’ experience above their marketers’ bad urges, this will be the situation we have to live with.
I get that. But I think it’s fair to point out that this is not a one and done solution, but something that you keep having to fiddle with every 90 days. Kind of a nag in itself.
I believe what many are hoping for is that one day there will again be a way to say “thanks but no thanks” and then not have to deal with a specific upgrade offer again. Kind of like, well this
I was getting them daily, but I noticed they stopped as of a few days ago in my v17.7.2. Also, I am finally updating my iOS to v18.8.1 (currently “Preparing Update…”).
Just upgrade. That will clear it out. There’s a reason Apple makes it a nag you can’t get rid of. There are new security features in 18 and support and upgrades for 17 will stop. Apple does not want to invest in keeping old systems indefinitely secure and bug free. The little red badge nag is your cost for not keeping with the flow.
Everything that is working perfectly in 17 will do so likewise in 18. There are some new features in 18 that are well worth while, but you can ignore them if you want.
I received a message from Adam that my original post has been hidden by the community. Please tell me what I did wrong. I don’t want to offend anyone, it was not my intention. Thank you!
Don’t worry about it. Some members are trigger happy with the flag/report function, for whatever reason. Adam is simply choosing the path of least resistance.
Sorry about that! Someone flagged it as off-topic, but since it was the initial post (and was well within the realm of what TidBITS Talk covers), it gets to specify the topic. :-)
I’ve reset things so the message is no longer hidden, and set Discourse to be a little less sensitive about hiding flagged posts. (There are a boatload of settings in that area, so I can’t really predict what will happen when a flag is given.)
Let’s not go overboard with the flagging, folks—it does take me more time to evaluate them.
So I gave in and upgraded to ios 18.1.1 this morning on my iPad. Now, not 12 hours later, it is BUGGING ME TO UPGRADE TO 18.2! With a badge that won’t go away! Aaargh!
What the actual F is going on with Apple? This is beyond intolerable.
That was just bad luck that you chose to upgrade only hours before they released the next update. This one was actually rumored for today. On the bright side, if there’s no 18.2.1, chances are we can get a full month of no-nag before 18.3 comes around.
I’d say you are fortunate if you’re able to feel an update reminder is “beyond intolerable”. I’ve got a lot of worrying things in my life that are more frustrating, disturbing, or consequential than a red dot on a screen.
