How to stop Firefox update notifications?

Question

I have Firefox 56, the last good version of the browser, where things I need in terms of performance, and functionality both still work. I'm not going to update, EVER. There are other browsers out there, but Firefox worked so well for scripting.

Anyhow, Firefox keeps alerting me about updates. I have turned the updates off, in about:preferences but Firefox keeps bugging me with notifications like these: and this:

I don't want to keep getting bothered by notifications, how do I make them stop?

Answer 1

From experimenting with Firefox config, just as a possible addition or alternative when solutions that have previously been suggested here are not enough.

After opening the about:config (typing about:config into the address bar and then pressing Enter), apply either or both of the following config items:

• Search for app.update.silent, then set it to true
• Search for app.update.url, then change it to a fake/non-existent URL

  For example, if the original is https://aus5.mozilla.org/update/6/%PRODUCT%/..., I changed it to xxxhttps://xxxaus5.mozilla.org/update/6/%PRODUCT%/...

Answer 2

None of the former about:config Configuration changes work nowadays to control update behaviour

This should completely disable the Updates messages in Firefox as per today.

Other policies can be modified in this way. Check the GitHub link and the about:policies section.

If you ever, ever want the original behavior, just undo these steps.

Method 1 - Registry change (Windows)

• Create the following Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox
• Create inside, a 32-Bit DWORD DisableAppUpdate, with value 1.
• Restart Firefox.

The following can be saved as a .reg file to apply this change:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox]
"DisableAppUpdate"=dword:00000001

Or execute the following line in an elevated command prompt/PowerShell:

reg ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox /v DisableAppUpdate /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Method 2 - Policies.json (Windows / Linux / Others)

• Create the folder distribution at the same place the Firefox executable is located, i.e. in Windows: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\distribution\.

• Create inside, a file policies.json with this text:

{ 
    "policies": {
        "DisableAppUpdate": true
    } 
}

• Restart Firefox.

Method 3 - Policies.json (Mac OS)

• Create the folder distribution at the same place the Firefox executable is located, i.e. in MacOS: /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Resources.

• Create inside, a file policies.json with this text:

{ 
    "policies": {
        "DisableAppUpdate": true
    } 
}

• Or execute the following line in an elevated command prompt:

mkdir -p /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/distribution && echo '{ "policies": { "DisableAppUpdate": true } }' > /Applications/ Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/distribution/policies.json

• Restart Firefox.

After this, the following information should appear:

Under about:preferences, under Updates:

Updates disabled by your system administrator

Under about:policies:

Policy Name            Policy Value
DisableAppUpdate       true

Answer 3

I had the same question!

I assume that you want to completely disable the updates, otherwise you won't opt the option to disable automatically install updates option from the settings, and won't get the notification at all!

Well, actually if you truly want to disable autoupdate, you can add a policy.

To add a policy, follow the steps:

1. Go to the firefox installation directory (for any supported OS).
2. Create a directory called distribution.
3. Change directory into distribution.
4. Create a file called policies.json. And paste this code:

{
    "policies": {
        "DisableAppUpdate": true
    }
}

Save the file, and quit the editor.

5. Restart Firefox if it's already running.
6. To confirm, you can go to the URL about:policies and check if there's an entry like this:

Policy Name     Policy Value
DisableAppUpdate    true

After you are done, from the Menu => Help => About Nightly you get to see this:

When you want to update, you may set the boolean value to false.

Reading More about Policies

For documentation, you can read the options here in about:policies#documentation. You can learn more about how to add policies here.

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

This is just extension of previous answer.

Find the user preference file, named as prefs.js, in user specific folder.

• Windows: %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xyz.default\prefs.js
• Linux: ~\.mozilla\firefox\xyz.default\prefs.js

Then add these following three lines. These preferences are of the boolean type. If you find any of these lines are already present, replace that with the following:

user_pref("app.update.auto", false);
user_pref("app.update.disable_button.showUpdateHistory", false);
user_pref("app.update.enabled", false);

Also if you want to remove the update URL, add these three lines. These preferences are string type:

user_pref("app.update.url", "");
user_pref("app.update.url.details", "");
user_pref("app.update.url.manual", "");

If these don't work delete/move these three files:

1. update-settings.ini,
2. updater.ini,
3. updater.exe (updater in Linux).

Answer 5

For others, a simpler solution if you are just annoyed by that second type of notification, you can do this in about:config by setting app.update.doorhanger to false.

Answer 6

You have done the method via Firefox Menus (which is the about:preferences), but there are a few more below.

From about:config Menu

• Type about:config in the address bar, then press Enter.
• Search for the app.update.auto setting.
• Double-click the app.update.auto option to toggle the setting.  If set to true, automatic updates are enabled.  If set to false, automatic updates are disabled.

Via prefs.js file

• Close Firefox.

• Navigate to the following location based on your operating system.

  • Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10 – %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox
  • Unix/Linux – ~/.mozilla/
  • macOS / OS X – ~/Library/Mozilla/ or ~/Library/Application Support/

• Open the Profiles folder.

• Open the folder that represents the profile you would like to edit.  The name of the folder will vary.  It is usually a bunch of alphanumeric characters, followed by . and the user-visible profile name (which is default by default).

• Open the prefs.js file with a text editor like Notepad.

• Look for a line that contains app.update.enabled. If it doesn’t exist, add a line for it in the file and set it as desired using these examples:

  • Automatic updates enabled: user_pref("app.update.enabled", true);
  • Automatic updates disabled: user_pref("app.update.enabled", false);

• (Save the file.)

Source: TechniPages: Enable or Disable Automatic Updates in Firefox.

Answer 7

Alternatively to Sourav Goswami's answer you can paste into policies.json this code

{
    "policies": {
        "AppUpdateURL": "http://127.0.0.1/"
    }
}

Thus you will got message "You are using latest version of Firefox" in "About" screen.

Answer 8

Extension to Sourav Goswami's answer:

Under macOS 12.2 "Monterey" I found out that Firefox 96.0.2 replaces the carefully crafted distribution/policies.json file. This happened even if I set the permissions of this file read-only (444).

It seems, however, that if I additionally make the containing distribution directory read-only (permissions 555), then it helps a little: in this case Firefox adds some more settings to the policies.json file but at least leaves the "DisableAppUpdate": true stanza intact. OTOH the permissions of the distribution directory are reset to 755, i.e. root can write to it again.

This is what I have in my policies.json file after all this:

{
    "policies" : 
    {
        "DisableAppUpdate" : true,
        "ExtensionSettings" : 
        {
            "[email protected]" : 
            {
                "install_url" : "file:///opt/snow/FFCloudmetering.xpi",
                "installation_mode" : "blocked"
            }
        }
    }
}

Which is deeply disturbing, because indeed the /opt/snow directory is present on my machine, it contains a snowagent, and it's quite obvious that Firefox installed this garbage behind my back.

I am not sure I'd like to have Firefox any more on my machine. The only problem is that some websites don't work properly with Safari. But that's a topic for another thread, so I stop here.

Please feel free to comment if you saw this behaviour on other platforms. Thanks.

Update (bad pun intended): The "policies" trick doesn't work, this morning Firefox started nagging me again with its oh-so-important update. OTOH the policies.json file, which is still read-only, now contains only this:

{
        "policies" : 
        {
                "DisableAppUpdate" : true,
        }
}

at least the "snow" thingy is gone.

Second update: Firefox 98.0.1 simply deleted the distribution directory and today I was nagged yet again because 98.0.2 is now available, hooray. My next attempt to fight Mozilla was to lock both the distribution directory and the policies.json file within it with the chflags uchg <file> command. Looks good, Firefox claims that updates have been disabled by the system administration. We'll see how long that lasts.

Third update: After installing Firefox 99.0.1, this time under MacOS 11.6.3 "Big Sur" and creating the distribution/policies.json directory, all was quiet until today (2022-05-10) when I was greeted with the following message:

And all this despite the Firefox Preferences settings still make me believe that updates are disabled:

No, I don't want to spend my time babysitting Firefox and ranting about it on superuser.com :-)

Desperately looking for a solution that stops these unnecessary updates.

Answer 9

renaming update.exe to update3.exe do the job