Turn off Chrome updates

Question

Is there a way to turn off Chrome's autoupdate feature? I'm trying to turn it off because I'm currently on a metered connection.

I tried to set the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update\UpdateDefault to 0, but that didn't help.

Answer 1

Is there a way to turn off Chrome's auto-update feature?

There are 3 possible solutions:

1. Disable Chrome Update scheduled tasks.

2. Disable "Google Update" plugin.

3. Modify HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update

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Solution 1 - Disable Chrome Update scheduled tasks

1. "Start" > "Run" > "Task Scheduler"

2. Select "Task Scheduler Library"

3. Select "GoogleUpdateTaskMachineCore", right click and select "Disable"

4. Select "GoogleUpdateTaskMachineUA", right click and select "Disable"

   

5. Close "Task Scheduler"

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Solution 2 - Disable "Google Update" plugin

1. Enter "about: plugins" in the Address bar and press Enter.

   

2. Search for "Google Update" in the pop-up list and disable it.

   

3. Restart Chrome.

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Solution 3 - Modify HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update

1. Go the Registry Editor.

   a. Windows 7 - press Windows+R at the same time to get the Run box, enter "regedit" press Enter.

   b. Windows 8 - move your cursor to the right corner of the top screen to get the Charms bar. Then click on "Apps", enter "run" in the search box, press Enter, enter "regedit" in the pop-up box and press Enter

   

2. Navigate to the following key:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update

   

3. Look for "UpdateDefault" on the right side of the Registry Editor and double click on it.

   

   Note:

   If you cannot find "UpdateDefault", right click on a blank place in the right side > click "New" > "String Value" > Name it "UpdateDefault"

4. Change the value data to 0

   

5. Click "OK" to save the changes

Source How to Stop Google Chrome from Automatic Update

Answer 2

I found another and entirely different way to disable google chrome update in latest version 50.x. I followed this link Halting auto-updates (Not Recommended)

1. You should get the Administrative template for your Windows, from this link mentioned in the article above.

2. Launch group policy editor Navigate to Start > Run: gpedit.msc

3. Import the template in this Administrative Templates screen,

   

4. Navigate to Administrative Templates > Google > Google Update > Preferences.

5. On the right side select Modify the Auto-update check period override and select edit policy setting

6. Enable this property and select the checkbox Disable all the auto-update checks below the "Minutes between update checks"

I did this in Windows 10 running Chrome version 50.0.2661.102 m.

Answer 3

You can also edit GoogleUpdate.exe's NTFS permissions by, first, removing the inheritance:

icacls %localappdata%\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe /inheritance:r

Then, remove the user's permissions to which the scheduled tasks "GoogleUpdateTaskMachineCore" and "GoogleUpdateTaskMachineUA" are ran with:

icacls %localappdata%\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe /remove:g %userdomain%\%username%

Depending on your Google Chrome Installation, the path may be different. I suggest taking a look in the "Action" tab of both scheduled tasks to extract the exact path.

EDIT: Actually, this feels like it's not enough. The GoogleUpdate.exe might not be there when you install Chrome and could be added later. You might want to create an empty file Chrome won't be able to overwrite:

mkdir %localappdata%\Google\Update\
copy NUL %localappdata%\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe

Answer 4

It can be done with 2 simple steps:

1. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\
2. Rename Update folder (for ex to Update.bak)

That's it.

Update