Blocking applications -- ignore and do other updates?

[Gregory Neagle]

As part of the changes in-progress to have Managed Software Center offer to quit blocking applications before proceeding with an update, I’m considering also adding support for skipping blocked items and installing other items. Something like this:

[Gregory Neagle]

Here’s the button labeled as just “Update others”:

[Allister Banks]

I love integrating this idea and that implementation, it’s what numerous users have directly asked for as they interpret it to be an intuitive thing to want/have occur.
Allister

> On Feb 8, 2026, at 2:47 AM, 'Gregory Neagle' via munki-dev <munk...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Here’s the button labeled as just “Update others”:
>
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> <PastedGraphic-1.png>

>
>
>
>> On Feb 7, 2026, at 9:02 AM, Gregory Neagle <gregn...@mac.com> wrote:
>>
>> As part of the changes in-progress to have Managed Software Center offer to quit blocking applications before proceeding with an update, I’m considering also adding support for skipping blocked items and installing other items. Something like this:
>>

>> <SkipAndUpdateOthers.png>
>>
>> I’d guess that admins might want a preference to allow opting into (or out of) this behavior, as one strategy admins have used is “carrot and stick” — IOW, “if you really want that ChatGPT app you chose, you must install the other pending updates as well”.
>>
>> I’m not sure about the wording on the button; it does need to be somewhat terse since it will need to be localized into other languages… Maybe just “Update others”? I’d want that button to appear only if there are pending updates _not_ blocked by running applications.
>>
>> -Greg
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[Gregory Neagle]

Working name for the preference: OfferToUpdateOthers, to complement OfferToQuitBlockingApps and OfferToForceQuitBlockingApps.

I suppose it could be something like OfferToUpdateOthersWhenBlockingApps…

-Greg

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/munki-dev/F0EDA518-D3DD-4CEC-8A76-B5A90E3EF7EC%40aru-b.com.

[Gregory Neagle]

Demo:

[Gregory Neagle]

Wondering if all these new prefs should be prefixed with “MSC”, so

MSCOfferToQuitBlockingApps

MSCOfferToForceQuitBlockingApps

MSCOfferToUpdateOthers

-Greg

[Jordan Calhoun]

Love it