IOS 18.4 and MacOS 15.4 Quietly Enable Automatic Updates on Your IPhone and Mac
Apple just released iOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4 for iPhone and Mac, respectively. Once the update is complete, you’ll see a message informing you that as part of the update, the company has enabled automatic updates on your device, even if you previously turned them off. This means that if you do nothing, Apple will begin downloading and installing future software updates on your devices on its own.
To test this, I turned off automatic updates on my iPhone and Mac, and then started updating to iOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4. Of course, once the updates were completed, Apple duly informed me that it had gone ahead and enabled automatic updates on my devices. I usually don’t mind automatically downloading OS updates in the background while I go about my business, but enabling automatic installation without explicit consent is the kind of abuse I absolutely don’t want to see.
On macOS, after downloading the update, you’ll see a notification that your Mac will restart within 60 seconds to complete the update. If you’re away from your computer for a while and miss it, you risk losing unsaved data. This cannot happen on my main work machine. To Apple’s credit, you can select “Download automatically only” in the update notification to stop automatic installation (the update data will be downloaded to your computer, but not installed), but the button can be a little hard to see, and you’ll need to go into Settings to turn off receiving any future updates altogether.
How to disable automatic updates (if you absolutely do not want this)
I generally don’t recommend turning off automatic downloads of new operating system software, since these updates can also patch vulnerabilities, but it is the only option for people who want to maintain full control over their update schedule. This can be useful for those who use these devices to do important work, such as app developers, designers, or those who don’t have enough free space on their phone or laptop.
To turn off automatic updates on iPhone and Mac, go to Settings > General > Software Update > Automatic Updates . On your iPhone, disable all three checkboxes on this page (or select and select more detailed information). On macOS, turn off “Download new updates when available” and “Install macOS updates” (or, again, your choice).