In recent years Apple has gotten a bit more pushy with their macOS upgrades. They are still entirely optional but they really do like to pester you with popups to upgrade. For most people it makes sense to upgrade every year. Maybe not the moment the software is released but soon therafter. Even if you are a late adopter I recommend upgrading each August just before the next version comes out. By that time the software is as stable as it’s going to get. And most problems I come across with new clients are due to skipping versions. Either because that ugprade process wasn’t as well tested or the user needs to become familiar with too many changes all at once.
But there are many good reasons to not upgrade to High Sierra just yet:
- If you have software that isn’t compatible
- Your Mac isn’t compatible (if so you should start saving up for a replacement since El Capitan will likely stop getting security updates this fall)
- You want to wait until later this year when it’s more stable
But how to stop the popups? Its pretty easy but it’s not obvious.
- Click the Apple menu
- Click “App Store”
- Click the Updates tab
- Right click (or control-click) anywhere on the mountain banner
- Click “Hide Update”
If you are short on storage you can also go into your Applications folder and drag the Install macOS High Sierra app to the trash. It’s several gigabytes, and it’s probably the installer for 10.13.1 anyway, which is long outdated since 10.13.3 is now current. If you don’t see it your computer might not have downloaded it.
If you ever want to upgrade to High Sierra in the future you can easily do so by finding it in the App Store or go directly there with this link. However, if Apple continues their pattern when 10.14 is released in September you will no longer be able to download High Sierra from the App Store after that date.