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My old mac keeps downloading the monterey macos update installer even though I've told it not to in the system settings. It's also bugging me about installing it every day. Is there any way for me to prevent it from downloading it again?

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  • See apple.stackexchange.com/questions/442961/…
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 20, 2022 at 14:02
  • Didn't help. I haven't been in any beta. Trying now to put another much smaller app with the same name in the same place to see if that blocks it from being downloaded.
    – Drathier
    Commented Jul 20, 2022 at 18:14

3 Answers 3

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Take any small .app file in the applications folder.
Copy and name the copy Install macOS Monterey.app.
Now there's a file in the way, and the updater won't download it again.

/Applications/Install macOS Monterey.app is the exact path.

cp -r /System/Applications/Stocks.app "/Applications/Install macOS Monterey.app"

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  • 1
    Or you can just make a text file and rename it to have .app extension. Doesn't need to be an actual application.
    – Alexei Kuzmichev
    Commented Aug 15, 2022 at 19:13
  • They "fixed" it. Now it overwrites the file.
    – Drathier
    Commented Sep 2, 2022 at 7:38
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any way for me to prevent it from downloading it again?

Approach

Preventing the (re)download of the OS update installer can be achieved by redirecting all connections attempting to reach Apple's update servers for the OS.

Method

Add /etc/hosts entries to redirect to an unused network address.

Example

A snippet from hosts follows (10.0.0.254 is for illustration, you may want to change it):

# Prevent macOS Monterey Installer from being downloaded unnneeded
10.0.0.254 swcdn.apple.com
10.0.0.254 swdownload.apple.com
10.0.0.254 swquery.apple.com
10.0.0.254 swscan.apple.com
# More per https://community.zscaler.com/t/mac-app-store-and-os-updates-blocked/16716/3
10.0.0.254 gg.apple.com
10.0.0.254 gnf-mdn.apple.com
10.0.0.254 gs.apple.com
10.0.0.254 ig.apple.com
10.0.0.254 skl.apple.com

Test

Check with: Apple -> Software Update -> (wait) -> see "Unable to check for updates Didn't get a response from Apple Software Update server".

Disclaimers

  • There could be potential side effects from this that are not suitable for your particular computer or network setup. Ideally, I would want to direct the traffic to a black hole instead of a non-existing device (or perhaps at the router/firewall), but that looks more involved and maybe less transportable.
  • I don't think Mojave is anticipated to receive any security updates beyond 2021-005, which you probably already have. But in the unlikely change any future Apple security updates, downloading them would probably require temporarily undoing these changes.

Notes

  • I usually turn off all OS update check/download/install options in Software Update -> Advanced, so I'm not really sure how Monterey got downloaded.
  • I used to have Do Not Disturb enabled for 23hr 59min per day in order to never see any OS update notifications, but this seems no longer needed now that update server network connections are blocked by hosts.
    • This means that now I can get notifications on Mojave from the one app I actually do want them from.
  • The App Store still seems to work for me to search & download apps with this in place.
  • If the fix turns out to stop working or have a problem, I will try to come back and edit this.
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Add a cron to automatically delete the file when it appears. Answer courtesy of reddit

Open crontab with Vim:

sudo crontab -e

Press i for INSERT mode, then paste the following:

* * * * * rm -rf /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Monterey.app

Press ESC to leave INSERT mode, then :x to save and exit

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