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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

And yet, Apple has been pushing me in a direction I don't want to go with their recent OS X versions. I paid a lot of money for my mackbook and was quite happy with Lion, but was recently forced to upgrade because apparently Lion is way too out of date.

So now I'm on Sierra, and I absolutely hate it. I thought it'd mostly just be uglier, but it bugs me with updates I don't want or need but am not allowed to ignore. And I hate their in-your-face notifications blocking an important part of my screen. (How about at the bottom next to the dock? Or in the menu bar? Just not over an active working window.)

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More or less hopelessly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem here, but I totally agree with you. The non-stop annoying notifications was one of the main bullet points that I listed when leaving Windows 10 years ago, and now they've finally found me again..

Have you found the Notifications preference pane, which allows you to control notifications including turning them off completely if you like?

Here's the funny thing about that notifications preference pane: I can tweak the way any kind of notification is displayed, except for updates. There the only options are: update now or pretend to update now.

For this one, you can turn off "automatically check for updates" in App Store preferences.

(It's my least favourite notification too.)

Which notifications are you talking about? I have no such experience using Sierra.

"Hey, have you tried Safari? It's pretty great. Why don't you give it a try?"

"Umm, hey there...me again. You still haven't tried Safari? What's wrong? Want me to launch it for you?"

"Ok, this is getting a little awkward. We worked pretty hard making Safari, and you won't even try it? I'm trying to not be insulted here, but you're not making it easy."

"Listen motherfucker. You know that Keychain thing that you don't really pay much attention to. Well, I control that. If you want to see your Gmail password again, try motherfucking Safari. Clicky clicky, you lazy fuck."

Interesting. I don't use Safari, and have never seen "try Safari" notifications. I wonder what the criteria for it are.

Same here. Not 1 notification so far...

Probably having chrome installed.

Since I have Chrome installed, I doubt that's it.

i run chrome and have never seen a notification mentioning Safari ever

My favorite is the, "a keynote upgrade is available" on each launch. Only to find out after clicking its "only after you update your OS!" (I'm was on mavericks)

And the "please use iCloud..."

On cars we used to call them "guilt buttons" for plastic shaped like buttons on the dashboard for options you didn't purchase.

I don't use Safari, I use Chrome normally but Firefox sometimes. Never seen notifications like that, to be honest. Like the sibling comment, I wonder what the criteria for that nagging is. Maybe it's A/B testing, and you fell in the unlucky category?

Notifications at the top-right, covering the top-right of whichever window is active. Fortunately most of them can be dismissed, but those concerning updates cannot, which is extremely annoying. I've once already accidentally triggered a 15 minute update, which can be extremely inconvenient when it happens at the wrong time.

I've found a way to get rid of the update notifications, though: click "details", which opens the app store with a list of your pending updates. As long as you leave that open, the notification won't reappear.

Still annoying, though.

You can hide the notifications until you want to open notification center to see what they are by turning on Do Not Disturb in the settings. (Set it to be active on a timed basis, from say "7:01AM to 7:00am" to cover a full 24 hour spread.)

Alternately, you can totally disable notification center via the terminal: http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/06/disable-notification-center-r...

I don't think there's a way to move them, unfortunately. Or to disable just the update notifications, beyond just disabling auto-download for them.

Alternatively, Settings > App Store > uncheck "Download newly available updates in the background"

I really wish this wasn't on by default, or at least it prompted you to change this on install. Auto-downloading updates cost a month of valuable internet as it blew through the ISP's data cap in a single day.

Notifications are on the top right of the screen. They don't cover the active window? It sounds like something strange is wrong with your system.

I also never get notifications about updates. No workarounds needed.

To be fair, if you're on a laptop or are just regularly using full-screen apps, top-right notifications are going to cover a chunk of your screen which you might be using. Of course, so would notifications absolutely-anywhere in that situation.

I've got a tiny corner to the left or right of my dock that they're free to use.

Good point. I have my Dock hidden, so I tend to forget most people will have that space available. :D

They cover the active window if the active window covers the top right of the screen...

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