Mac Admins’ favorite MDM-agnostic, “set-it-and-forget-it” reminder now adds configurable post-deadline restart behavior, red at-a-glance urgency highlights, and cleaner deployment control over end-user support messaging
While Apple’s Declarative Device Management (DDM) provides Mac Admins with a powerful way to enforce macOS updates, its built-in notification is often too subtle for most administrators:
DDM OS Reminder evaluates the most recent EnforcedInstallDate and setPastDuePaddedEnforcementDate entries in /var/log/install.log, then leverages a swiftDialog-enabled script plus a LaunchDaemon to deliver a more prominent end-user dialog that reminds users to update their Mac to comply with DDM-enforced macOS update deadlines.
- Customizable: Easily customize the reminder dialog’s title, message, icons (including light/dark overlay icons) and button text to fit your organization’s requirements by distributing a Configuration Profile via any MDM solution.
- Easy Installation: The assemble.zsh script makes it easy to deploy your reminder dialog and display frequency customizations via any MDM solution, enabling quick rollout of DDM OS Reminder organization-wide.
- Set-it-and-forget-it: Once configured and installed, a LaunchDaemon displays your customized reminder dialog — automatically checking the installed macOS version against the DDM-required version — to remind users if an update is required.
- Deadline Awareness: Whenever a DDM-enforced macOS version or its deadline is updated via your MDM solution, the reminder dialog dynamically updates the countdown to both the deadline and required macOS version to drive timely compliance.
- Intelligently Intrusive: The reminder dialog is designed to be informative without being disruptive, first checking whether a user is in an online meeting — via an allowlist of approved apps — before displaying the dialog, so users can remain productive while still being reminded to update.
- Logging: The script logs its actions to your specified log file, allowing Mac Admins to monitor its activity and troubleshoot as necessary.
- Demonstration Mode: A built-in
demomode allows Mac Admins to test the appearance and functionality of the reminder dialog with ease:zsh reminderDialog.zsh demo. - 🆕 Configurable Post-Deadline Restart Policy: Choose whether past-deadline devices are left alone, prompted to restart, or forced to restart (
Off,Prompt,Force) after your defined grace period, balancing user flexibility with reliable compliance.
Community-supplied, best-effort support is available on the Mac Admins Slack (free, registration required) #ddm-os-reminders channel, or you can open an issue.
See also: Diagrams/README.md for architecture and sequence diagrams.
See CHANGELOG for a detailed list of changes and improvements.