How to suppress alert 'this app is not optimized for your Mac'

Question

I get this pop-up warning on one-off installers and such irrelevant situations. I understand it's to encourage a migration away from 32-bit apps; fine, but there's nothing I can do about it. It's getting on my nerves. Is there some way to put a stop to it altogether?

Answer 1

As mentioned (very briefly) in Apple's guide on how to Prepare your institution for iOS 12 or macOS Mojave, the CSUIDisable32BitWarnings property key can be used to disable the 32bit warning alert.

This can be done in either of the following two ways:

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In the terminal

According to this page, the warnings can be disabled by entering the following command in the terminal:

defaults write -g CSUIDisable32BitWarnings -boolean TRUE

To re-enable the warnings:

defaults delete -g CSUIDisable32BitWarnings

To display the current setting:

defaults read -g CSUIDisable32BitWarnings

where 1 means the alerts are disabled, and 0 or a does not exist error message means the alerts are active.

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Using a management profile

The same effect can be achieved by preparing a management profile that sets the property key, as proposed by Apple in the above mentioned article. This may be the preferred solution to disable the alerts on multiple Macs.

This article explains how. It also provides a link to a sample management profile. The profile can be installed by downloading and double-clicking it.

For the sake of completeness, this is the example from the above link:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>PayloadContent</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>CSUIDisable32BitWarnings</key>
            <true/>
            <key>PayloadDescription</key>
            <string>Configures com.apple.coreservices.uiagent settings</string>
            <key>PayloadDisplayName</key>
            <string>com.apple.coreservices.uiagent</string>
            <key>PayloadIdentifier</key>
            <string>com.company.profile.57E80D89-1CA6-4386-8FDE-81DA0292CA3D.com.apple.coreservices.uiagent.FE123766-B72C-4620-9A21-CCABBEB48B2A</string>
            <key>PayloadOrganization</key>
            <string></string>
            <key>PayloadType</key>
            <string>com.apple.coreservices.uiagent</string>
            <key>PayloadUUID</key>
            <string>FE123766-B72C-4620-9A21-CCABBEB48B2A</string>
            <key>PayloadVersion</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
        </dict>
    </array>
    <key>PayloadDescription</key>
    <string>Disable 32-bit application warnings</string>
    <key>PayloadDisplayName</key>
    <string>Disable 32-bit application warnings</string>
    <key>PayloadIdentifier</key>
    <string>com.company.profile.csuidisable32bitwarning.57E80D89-1CA6-4386-8FDE-81DA0292CA3D</string>
    <key>PayloadOrganization</key>
    <string>Company Name</string>
    <key>PayloadScope</key>
    <string>System</string>
    <key>PayloadType</key>
    <string>Configuration</string>
    <key>PayloadUUID</key>
    <string>57E80D89-1CA6-4386-8FDE-81DA0292CA3D</string>
    <key>PayloadVersion</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

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Update #1

This blog article might be interesting in this context: Mojave’s Legacy Software is doubly wrong

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Update #2

File ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.coreservices.uiagent.plist seems to maintain a list of alerts and last alert date for 32bit apps. If your alerts keep reappearing, it might help to delete it, but that is just an assumption.

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.coreservices.uiagent.plist

Answer 2

This alert fires one time when you launch each app that’s going to stop working in the near future. Other than opening up system information and getting all the alerts out of the way, there is no documented way to stop this alert or fake the file that tracks whether the alert has fired.

It is to let the users know that the 32-bit apps they are using will no longer be supported in the next major version of macOS. This is especially critical for helpers like installers - there’s no reason these developers don’t use a modern apple package or just modernize their helpers. Imagine how disappointed future you will be to find your 64 bit app can not be reinstalled since it uses a now broken installer.

For more details, you can refer to the Apple Support document, 32-bit app compatibility with macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 and later.