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I run Firefox Nightly (68.0a1) and it pretends to allow me to choose when to update, but then proceeds to nag me about it nonstop until I cave in and actually do an update.

As you can imagine this is incredibly annoying since updates are released, well, nightly. This means I get an endless stream of popovers like this that I can't seem to do anything about:

Annoying update popover

Clicking "Not Now" dismisses the popover until an arbitrary time later, or until the next app launch, so even if I click it I will probably have to dismiss it again a few minutes later.

  • The Nightly settings page does not offer me the option to turn off autoupdate without also bothering me about it multiple times a day
  • Setting app.update.auto to false has no effect other than to constantly make these popovers appear
  • Setting app.update.silent to true has no effect on this problem

The same behavior exists in the standard Firefox release as far as I'm aware, so the question applies to that as well.

How do I get rid of these popovers?

MacOS Mojave 10.14.4

Update: why are they doing this?

The link in the answer below has this to say about disabling automatic checks for updates:

The bug listing on Bugzilla@Mozilla highlights that the option is "easy to enable and forget about", and that it "contributes to orphaned users" and "exposes users to severe security issues"

Since the option to disable automatically checking for updates has apparently disappeared not only from Firefox's settings page but from about:config as well, here's why the above reasons are bad excuses and why none of them are convincing:

  1. Easy to forget about? They must be joking. They've clearly demonstrated that they have the means to remind users of the same thing over, and over, and over again, at their discretion. To then imply that it's impossible to just remind users to manually check for updates once in a while is ridiculous.

  2. "Contributes to orphaned users" -- do they seriously confuse an active choice with becoming a victim? And it undoubtedly is, or can easily be made into, an active choice because of #1; you're not "orphaned" (read: abandoned) if you're regularly reminded and given both choice and opportunity to manually check for updates. The fact that they've selectively chosen not to implement such a reminder (i.e. reusing already existing functionality), and that that's the only reason it can be seen as something other than an active choice, doesn't make for a particularly convincing argument. They could've just added a reminder in order to preserve choice, but opted instead to go out of their way to remove choice.

  3. "exposes users to severe security issues" -- a non-issue for the same reason as #2; the reminder mechanism is already there, negating any arguments about how how it's not an active choice and how users "forget" to check for updates. Mozilla has the tools to remind users at any time -- say, once every other week -- that it's time to check for updates, but instead we get five reminders a day about how there is one available.

In practice I now get more freedom from Apple than from Momzilla on when to update software.

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
4

The quick answer is to

  • Browse to Applications with Finder
  • Right click and show the package contents of Firefox.app
  • Create new directory Firefox.app/Contents/Resources/distribution
  • Create a text file called policies.json
  • Insert the following 
{
    "policies": {
    "DisableAppUpdate": true
    }
}
  • Save the file and reopen Firefox.

The above is a rehash with list based instructions from How to stop Firefox's new versions from showing the update nag screen?

The reason Mozilla did this is detailed in this article https://www.ghacks.net/2018/07/28/mozilla-makes-it-more-difficult-to-block-firefox-updates/

If you have an opinion about this "feature" you might give them some feedback https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/

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4
  • 1
    Thanks, looks like a good solution. I'm afraid I can't test it a.t.m. because, as usual, the problem magically disappeared at the same time it received an answer.
    – Andreas
    May 23, 2019 at 19:59
  • 2
    I did set app.update.download.attempts, app.update.download.promptMaxAttempts and app.update.elevate.attempts to 0, and multiplied app.update.badgeWaitTime and app.update.interval with about 10000, and app.update.doorhanger to false so maybe one of them decided to finally kick in after a week of having no effect.
    – Andreas
    May 23, 2019 at 20:02
  • 1
    Confirmed working. Too bad it also has the side effect of disabling updates.
    – Andreas
    Jun 22, 2019 at 23:37
  • not working in firefox 82
    – Dudi Boy
    Dec 20, 2020 at 9:51
3

Or, as a friend of mine suggested, simply delete the updater.exe. Without it the browser won't be able to update, no matter how hard it tries.

It is a great solution. In my instance I renamed that file _updater.exe and is no longer accessed.

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2

ON WINDOWS

Find the location where Firefox is at and create a folder named distribution

i.e. c:\firefox\distribution

Create a file called policies.json and inside of it, paste this:

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

Save it, restart FF

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