Update badge despite nothing to update

This 13" shipped with 10.15.4 19E2269.

I’m having the same issue with an iMac 5K (Late 2015). I had been running Mojave with the Catalina update suppressed. I decided it was time to update to Catalina, so I ran the Terminal command to un-ignore updates:

sudo /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --reset-ignored

I installed Catalina, which went well although it took several reboots. About This Mac reports Version 10.15.4 (19E287). The Software Update icon in System Preferences has a “1” badge, but going into it says “Your Mac is up to date” and remains so after a Command-R recheck.

There’s a long thread at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/software-updates-badge-wont-disappear-after-the-update-to-catalina-10-15-4.2228115/ discussing this. As near as I can make out, some folks were able to get rid of the badge by doing a safe boot followed by a normal boot. Others deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate.plist and then safe booted. Others may have just deleted the file and rebooted.

Note: I have not actually had the problem–just trying to help

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Thanks for the advice. Trashing the plist file itself did nothing. There’s another one in /Library/Preferences/ that seems to be more interesting when I look at its keys. But trashing that didn’t do anything either.

Safe boot is next.

Success. After bootinmg in safe mode was able to launch the SU pref and that removed the badge. After rebooting in regular mode the badge remains gone. :slight_smile: Many thanks, @aforkosh.

Now if anybody has an idea how to get rid of that badge on the TV app…

(why does that TV app not even show up in notification prefs?)

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@Simon, since you bought a new MBP, you are eligible for a free year of Apple TV+ and I suspect that badge is their way of reminding you of the offer (which you have to take advantage of within 3 months of your purchase).

This link has more details:

That’s quite possible, but the user would never know because the badge doesn’t lead anywhere. There’s no notification, no free promo banner to advertise the offer, let alone a way to say “thanks I know and I’m not interested”.

My iPhone TV app showed the same badge. Upon launch there was a splash about the promo and once I clicked that away the badge was gone. That mechanism seems to be broken on the Mac side.