Addigy provides its partners with a unique ability to prepare for major macOS upgrades carefully. In our Public Software catalog, we publish items designed to block and suppress upgrades to new major versions of macOS. These upgrade blockers can serve as an important tool to give you the time you need to vet major macOS upgrades before your users apply them.
The Addigy Public Software catalog provides install blockers from macOS 10.15 to macOS 13.
NOTE: The blocking process has now changed with the update to our pblock utility to v11. Please read the following Blocking Major OS Upgrades section of this article.
Blocking Major OS Upgrades
The most recent version of these upgrade blockers is titled Block Install macOS Ventura (version) and includes the following features.
- Addigy's proprietary utility prevents the Install macOS Ventura.app from running by removing the app's ability to execute at any level.
- When the install app is attempted to be executed, the end user will be met with the native macOS warning that the app can’t be opened. No ticket or email alert will trigger in this event.
- In the case where the file permissions are granted and the app is opened simultaneously, the process of the install app is killed, a badge notification is presented to the user to explain the occurrence, and an email or ticket is sent to the Addigy partner according to their ticketing integrations or support email settings.
- Any Install macOS Ventura.app or Beta app found on the device will be removed when the software runs as part of the policy, about every thirty minutes.
- If able to, Badge notifications from Apple that prompt the user to upgrade will be suppressed.
- Automatic download of macOS updates will be disabled.
- Automatic install of macOS updates will be disabled (except for critical updates).
Adding the Blocker to Your Policies
When you're ready to begin blocking a major OS upgrade, head over to the Catalog > Public Library.
Then, search "Block Install macOS."
Click the three dots, and select Assignments. You can choose any/all Policies where you'd like to enforce the blocker.
We always recommend using the most up-to-date versions of our blocking software!
Just Confirm the addition after clicking Add to Policy and that's it! You're ready to start blocking a major upgrade from Addigy.
Removing the Blocker
When the removal script is run, a command to reset all file execute permissions that were stripped will be re-assigned to all files listed in the ‘names.txt’ referenced in the Public Software.
When a blocker is removed from a policy, it may take up to thirty minutes for the device to remove all the pieces of the blocker. To speed up the process, we recommend going to the Policies page and selecting Deploy now from the menu under the Actions column to force the policy to run immediately. When the blocker is removed, any lingering settings applied to macOS updates will not be reverted.