Apple delivers the latest updates to their operating system and also the installed apps regularly so that everything works flawlessly on your Mac and you stay protected from any known vulnerabilities. But for some reason if you do not want to auto-update your Mac for a while, then you can disable the automatic updates easily and enable them later on.
One of the reasons why one would stop the automatic updates is to avoid any disruption of the work that is currently being done. If you continue with the installation of the automatic updates on your Mac, then you may have to wait for some time before the installation of the updates is finished.
Here is how you can disable or enable automatic updates on Mac:
- Click on the Apple logo icon near the top-left corner to open the Apple menu.
- From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.
- When System Preferences opens up, click on App Store.
- In the App Store settings, uncheck Automatically check for updates to disable the automatic updates.
This will disable all sorts of automatic updates including the macOS updates and the app updates. In case, you want to disable only macOS updates only, then you can uncheck the checkbox labeled Install macOS updates. Similarly, if you want to disable only the app updates then you can uncheck the checkbox labeled Install app updates.
In order to enable the automatic updates again, you can always repeat the above steps only placing a checkmark in each of these checkboxes. In case you decide to enable the automatic updates, you might want to choose another setting Download newly available updates in the background which allows it to download all the updates first and then notifies you for the installation. You should not select this setting if you are on a limited internet connection such as mobile data.