This has only been tested by myself on a small, old 3DS on 8.1, 9.0 and 9.4, but it's reasonable for this to work on any console. Feedback is obviously appreciated!

1. Completely power off your system.
2. Boot in recovery mode (press L+R+A+↑+Power, hold the first four about 1 second, more won't hurt the system but only your fingers... )
3. It will ask you as usual to update. However, it will take a little longer for the screen to come up compared to the speed it would have had if you didn't already have an update.
4. If you click yes, the update will be completely redownloaded then installed...
5. If you click no, it will power off and you'll go home free!

Update 2017: Yes, this is only for sysnand (although you can hack the import.db of a nag-free sysnand's internal storage onto emunand through Decrypt9 or similiar ways, check out specific tutorials), because no CFW implements the launching of emunand's recovery mode!

This is also unrelated to the forced updates for YouTube or the browsers bundled with 9.9+, and neither it resets the "update available for this app" text
on the Home launcher!

 

[bobmcjr]

This has only been tested by myself on a small, old 3DS on 8.1, 9.0 and 9.4, but it's reasonable for this to work on any console. Feedback is obviously appreciated!

1. Completely power off your system.
2. Boot in recovery mode (press L+R+A+↑+Power, hold the first four about 1 second, more won't hurt the system but only your fingers... )
3. It will ask you as usual to update. However, it will take a little longer for the screen to come up compared to the speed it would have had if you didn't already have an update.
4. If you click yes, the update will be completely redownloaded then installed...
5. If you click no, it will power off and you'll go home free!

I tried it on my 4.5 3DS XL, and that seemed to work. It took me to the update area of settings, and when I pressed cancel and rebooted, the nag didn't appear. I'll check again tomorrow to be sure it's gone.

 

[Ryccardo]

I tried it on my 4.5 3DS XL, and that seemed to work. It took me to the update area of settings, and when I pressed cancel and rebooted, the nag didn't appear. I'll check again tomorrow to be sure it's gone.

Oh, forgot to mention that you can compare the bottom screens of settings>yellow zone>page 4>system update before and after... it has a different wording from the one you see in recovery if a local update will be used.

And of course this trick is most useful if you also block Nintendo's servers on the router, although you can surely use it by itself!

 

[Necrojinsei]

Wow this is super useful! Thanks for the info, how did no one know about this before?

 

[Vappy]

I tried it on my 4.5 3DS XL, and that seemed to work. It took me to the update area of settings, and when I pressed cancel and rebooted, the nag didn't appear. I'll check again tomorrow to be sure it's gone.

Were you able to confirm if it worked or not?

 

[Jayro]

I didn't even know there was a 3DS recovery mode... Just entered it, and hit cancel, and as soon as my Home Menu came up, I disabled my Wireless.

I will report back tomorrow to confirm if this worked for me on my 9.2U 2DS with the nag for 9.5U

 

[spinal_cord]

Gave it a try, can't really loose anything.
Does anyone know, will changing the system clock to a different date usually bring up the update nag, or is it smarter than that?

 

[Patxinco]

This should be stickied, thanks mate ^^

 

[keyra]

This has only been tested by myself on a small, old 3DS on 8.1, 9.0 and 9.4, but it's reasonable for this to work on any console. Feedback is obviously appreciated!

1. Completely power off your system.
2. Boot in recovery mode (press L+R+A+↑+Power, hold the first four about 1 second, more won't hurt the system but only your fingers... )
3. It will ask you as usual to update. However, it will take a little longer for the screen to come up compared to the speed it would have had if you didn't already have an update.
4. If you click yes, the update will be completely redownloaded then installed...
5. If you click no, it will power off and you'll go home free!

hahahah that's so dumb ... and it works
coupled with psvproxy as dns i don't have to fear anything now

 

[bobmcjr]

Were you able to confirm if it worked or not?

Oh sorry. Yeah it appears to have worked.

 

[Cyan]

I added a link to this guide in the Gateway downgrade thread (instead of suggesting a format after downgrade).
Thanks for sharing this method

 

[DjoeN]

FW9.4 3DS XL with nag screen to update, did the trick and i rebooted the console often with regular pauses, this for half a day long, didn't have the nag screen again.
Will see tomorrow., damned if it keeps away, so stupid and easy
Thanks, there's nothing to lose anyway. (Just don't press Yes )

 

[Liberty]

Thanks!

 

[guitarheroknight]

So simple it almost made me laugh BTW is this a flaw in the system, should we expect this to get patched?

 

[psvpwner]

Thanks a lot for this, been searching forever for a solution to this bullshit problem!

 

[GameSystem]

Does this work when booting into emunand?

 

[urherenow]

Does this work when booting into emunand?

My first thought would be a big "NO". Booting emunand doesn't start from scratch (otherwise, there shouldn't be an issue with >6.0 save encryption) and a recovery menu is *usually* a function within the bootrom (already loaded before the firmware is loaded)

 

[bobmcjr]

Does this work when booting into emunand?

It doesn't seem to. I just get a black screen, and got the update nag on the next emuNAND boot, at least with Gateway w/emuNAND 9.0.0 booting from firmware 4.5.0.

 

[Apache Thunder]

If your emunand is still on an exploitable firmware version, you can just extract it with emunand tool (backup sysnand first!) and inject it to sysnand using Gateway's nand restore feature. Then do this trick to remove the update. Then have Gateway back the sysnand up again overwriting the initial file you extracted from emunand. Then injecting that file back into emunand. Then simply restore you original sysnand you started out with via Gateway menu.

Though I recommend you have a NAND mod before you think about attempting this. I've heard conflicting reports about certain versions emunands bricking the 3DS if you write them to sysnand. Also, RedNand/CFW emunand CAN NOT AND SHOULD NOT be injected into sysnand. That will also brick your console.

Also, if you have a NAND mod, you don't need to worry about emunand being on an exploitable version since you can use your hard mod to restore the sysnand backup anyway.

 

[psvpwner]

Uh oh. This seemed to work for me all day today, but once again it popped up the stupid nag
I've noticed though, that even if the update data is deleted (system update selection from system settings says ready to download update from internet) it will still pop up the nag ocassionally. Perhaps I misunderstood the topic though, and that's all you meant for this to do. Argh, I just want to get rid of the nag...

I've also noticed that Nintendo only enables the nag for some versions of the firmware. For example when I accidentally downloaded 9.0 on my 8.1 2DS (confirmed it via system update in system settings) but it never nagged me about it. But when it accidentally downloaded 9.4 (still being on 8.1) it started nagging me right away.