'softwareupdate --schedule off' no longer working?

ChrisJScott-wor
New Contributor III

I know that Apple has been tinkering with the functionality of the softwareupdate command and it appears to me that the --schedule off command has stop working but I can't find anything online confirming this.

I ask because I'm using this at the top of our DEPNotify-centric enrollment process and I'm recently noticing that the Software Udate notification is appearing mid-enrollment process, suggesting that the command no longer functions...

Anybody here have any insight/confirmation on this?

1 REPLY 1

brockwalters
Contributor II

I can confirm that it still works the way I am using it even on upcoming macOS versions. I can't speak to the enrollment workflow. You might want to consider doing all of this to completely disable Software Updates:

/usr/sbin/softwareupdate --schedule off
/usr/bin/defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.commerce.plist AutoUpdate -bool FALSE
for i in AutomaticCheckEnabled AutomaticDownload AutomaticallyInstallMacOSUpdates ConfigDataInstall CriticalUpdateInstall
do
    /usr/bin/defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate "$i" -bool FALSE
done

But use caution when doing things like turning off critical security updates.