The 23rd of January is an important day for Mac Admins, why? It’s 90 days since macOS 12 Monterey was released so if you have deployed a macOS Update Defer Profile via your MDM it will expire.
What does this mean?
It means the macOS 12 Monterey Update will now start to show in the user’s Software Update as below:
You may also find Apple start pushing out messages that appear in Notifications saying update now to Monterey, not ideal really.
Can I still block it?
Yes and No.
If the Mac is on Big Sur then it’s a no, Apple deprecated the ignore command. If it is on High Sierra, Mojave or Catalina then you can still use the ignore command. For details on using the ignore command head over to Derflouder.
Anything I can do to stop users from updating?
Well certainly in Jamf you can. You can create a Restricted Software policy that will stop the install, it won’t prevent the user from downloading though but it will block it from running and display a custom on-screen message to your users, although the characters limit is short.
You can find Restricted Software in the left-hand nav:
Have a look at Jamf’s documentation for how to block:
https://docs.jamf.com/10.35.0/jamf-pro/documentation/Restricted_Software.html
Here is an example of the policy setup to block Monterey:
In this example we are doing an exact process match, deleting the installer, killing the process plus informing Jamf users with notifications enabled (usually the Admins) the restriction policy has been broken and also showing an on-screen message to the end-user.
Hint: If you add a message and get an error when saving the restriction try shortening the message length.
Anything else?
There are a couple of Github scripts to also block the Monterey installer from running similar to a Jamf Restricted Software policy but that’s about it.
Apple really wants you to be getting the next macOS version out to your users within 90 days, great in theory but still, 3rd parties lag behind certifying their software.
Happy 23rd Jan!
