I’m staying on Sonoma for a while yet, and I now see a “1 update available” for Sequoia that I can’t get rid of. Not quite a forced update, but rather annoying.
I installed these latest security updates.
Yes - the Sequoia nagging tends to desensitise us from important security updates. Finding that there was an update for Safari was not self-evident when the Sequoia update window appeared. It was only that Adam’s article mentioned Safari and that made me look further.
Apparently this tip worked for Sonoma so I might try it with the Sequoia nagging:
Update: the Terminal command (with sudo prefix) ran without errors. Time will tell if the Sequoia nagging has stopped. And whether it prevents alerts for security updates!
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I’ve complained about exactly that before. It’s a real threat. Especially to less experienced users.
Apple used to be able to give us this:
Not only does it empower users, it also doesn’t teach folks to ignore badges and system notifications. All of these things will come back to bite the less experienced users. While the more experienced users just get pissed off after all the nudging and nannying they never asked for in the first place. Letting your marketers’ bad urges trump your users’ experience is a lack of leadership.
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Likewise. I used the PrefsEditor to make the change. My MajorOSUserNotificationDate preference was set to 2024-09-29 12:19:10, which is interesting, since I’ve been notified many times since September 29th. But I bumped the date up by two years (to 2026-09-29…). So we’ll see if it works.
I also saw a UserNotifcationDate preference, whose date is yesterday. I assume that’s the check for App Store updates, which I don’t want to suppress, so I left it unchanged.
Update: November 26, 2024: No luck. I got another popup notification a few days later. And the MajorOSUserNotificationDate is still in 2026. But the UserNotificationDate updated to November 26th.
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Yes, because while that defaults write command will delay the nag into the future, it does not get rid of any of the badges.
Apple’s refusal to let people acknowledge but hide such updates effectively teaches people to ignore badges and system notifications. That’s a bad thing.
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Right.
But my comment was about a command that was proclaimed to stop the nagging. Just not all of it.
Just booted up my MBA after a couple of days and … the Sequoia nagging continues 
I was thinking about this and remembered I had worked around it a few years back, in 2021.
Use a custom DNS server to block all access to specific Apple servers (eg. NextDNS, free with limitations)
I did it on my router so that the block applied to all devices on my network, but you can do it per-device. You can even toggle it on or off on demand, for example when you want to do a legitimate software update.
Here are the domains I blocked:
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You can try this: Apple just force-upgraded me to Sonoma - #45 by paal I am not absolutely sure the badge will go away, since my brain has trained itself to ignore it. The notification nagging will go away.
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Awesome. I’ll try it