I finally updated from Mojave to Catalina 10.15.4 a couple days ago. I had become accustomed to the persistent badge, and was annoyed to find that the badge persisted after the upgrade.
At first, it indicated that I should install the XCode command-line tools. I'm a developer, so I needed those anyway. (I was mildly annoyed to find that an in-place upgrade from Mojave with those tools installed to Catalina would
remove those tools!) Unfortunately, installing them didn't help.
I went through a few of the suggestions in this thread:
Code:
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate.plist
defaults delete com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs
defaults delete com.apple.systempreferences DidShowPrefBundleIDs
killall Dock
This makes the badge go away, but if I go back into System Preferences and check "Automatically keep my Mac up to date", the badge comes back immediately. I do not want that feature disabled.
Next, I tried:
Code:
$ rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate.plist
$ sudo softwareupdate -l
Password:
Software Update Tool
Finding available software
No new software available.
The badge still remained. Then I tried:
Code:
defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate.plist
{
LatestMajorOSSeenByUserBundleIdentifier = "com.apple.InstallAssistant.Catalina";
ProductKeysLastSeenByUser = (
"061-26566",
"061-62528"
);
}
I looked up those two keys in
/Library/Updates/ProductMetadata.plist:
Code:
...
<dict>
<key>cachedProductKey</key>
<string>061-26566</string>
<key>tags</key>
<array>
<string>DTCommandLineTools</string>
<string>com.apple.dt.commandlinetools.10.15</string>
</array>
</dict>
...
<dict>
<key>cachedProductKey</key>
<string>061-62528</string>
<key>tags</key>
<array>
<string>DTCommandLineTools</string>
<string>com.apple.dt.commandlinetools.10.15</string>
</array>
</dict>
...
Interestingly, there seem to be two identical entries, just with different keys, and apparently it wants me to update both. I'm not sure if this is meaningful, as I don't know exactly how this file is used.
Anyway, I checked
/Library/Updates:
Code:
$ ll /Library/Updates
total 2248
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 13K Apr 3 10:41 PPDVersions.plist
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root wheel 1.1M Apr 3 10:41 ProductMetadata.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 222B Apr 3 07:58 index.plist
Nothing to delete there.
I've also rebooted several times. What should I try next?