Does anyone know how to enable/disable OS X beta participation from the Terminal?
Typically one could opt-out of the Beta program by choosing the following option found in the App Store preferences pane. However once you opt out, the option to opt-in disappears and one has to use a utility found online to opt in again. This is tedious for me. Since most settings in OS X are managed using defaults, I wonder if anyone has a set of commands to enable/disable this option in the preference pane?
If not then perhaps a process where I can discover the relevant defaults read/write statements to enable this feature?
Ultimately, I would like to simply be able to opt-in during certain periods and opt-out during other times.
If there is a simpler approach than using the Terminal, I am open to learning about that as well.
Nota Bene – Please let me know in the comments if anything is unclear
or if more information is necessary to improve this question.
System:
I am running Yosemite and El Capitan on different machines.
Best Answer
As mentioned by SeanCLT, you/your system needs to be enrolled in one of the programs and you need to have the right utilities installed The statement about the utilities is an assumption, I have not tried it without. After that you can use the
softwareupdatecommand to enable and disable the beta/pre-release source.You can disable it via:
Enabling is a bit more tricky, because you need to choose your channel/source. The options are:
OS X Public Beta
OS X Developer Beta catalog
OS X Gold Master catalog