Want to stop MacOS Catalina showing up in Software Updates on a Mac? Don’t plan on updating to MacOS Catalina anytime soon? Still up in the air about whether or not to update to MacOS Catalina 10.15?

If you don’t want the “MacOS Catalina” update to show as available to download in the Software Update section of macOS, you can use a terminal command to block and hide the software update from showing as available. This can be helpful if you’re avoiding installing MacOS Catalina for whatever, whether to avoid potential problems, or if you just don’t want to deal with updating to it anytime soon.

How to Stop MacOS Catalina Showing in Software Update on Mac

Quit out of System Preferences Launch the Terminal application on the Mac, found in /Applications/Utilities/ folder Enter the following command at the Terminal command line: sudo softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina" Hit return then enter the admin password * and hit return again to execute the command with super user privileges Re-open System Preferences, the “MacOS Catalina” update will no longer show as available

Now MacOS Catalina update will remain hidden from Software Update on the Mac until this setting has been changed, which we’ll discuss further below.

With MacOS Catalina no longer taking up the primary “Software Update” screen, you’ll continue to be informed of incoming software updates for Security Updates, Safari Updates, iTunes updates, and any other software releases for the currently running MacOS version.

If you have ignored the MacOS Catalina upgrade you can also continue to selectively install specific software updates via Mac Software Update.

Any future software updates that are not Catalina will continue to be available, or install automatically if you have that feature enabled.

Note you may wish to download MacOS Catalina installer before ignoring the software update, for convenience, if you plan on installing it down the road, or onto another computer, or making a USB boot drive, or whatever else. Of course you can also make the upgrade show as available in Software Update again if you’d like to, as we’ll cover next.

How to Make MacOS Catalina Upgrade Available in Software Update Again

To unhide MacOS Catalina and make the MacOS 10.15 update available again, you can do one of two things. One is to start the process of downloading MacOS Catalina from the Mac App Store, but since we used the command line to ignore the update the best approach is to return to the Terminal.

To make MacOS Catalina upgrade show up in Software Update again, return to the command line and clear and reset the ignored software updates list with the following command line syntax:

sudo softwareupdate --reset-ignored

Again authenticate with the admin password and hit return.

Relaunching System Preferences and returning to Software Update will make MacOS Catalina show as available again, just like any other system software update in modern MacOS versions like Mojave (or Catalina).

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Did you ignore the MacOS Catalina software update? Why or why not? Do you know of another method to block or hide the MacOS Catalina update on a Mac? Let us know your experiences in the comments below.