Disable Auto-Update for Thunderbird and Firefox

Mozilla has decided to speed up the release cycle of Thunderbird and Firefox. This is all good except that it often breaks Add-ons. If you want to do the update manually, when you feel like it or when you know the all important plugins you use are compatible with the new version,  you may follow the instructions to disable automatic update of Thunderbird and Firefox.

Disabling Automatic Update in Firefox

Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.

You should get a page trying to scare you off with a message starting with “This might void you warranty!”, just click “I’ll be careful I promise!“.

Then in the Filter filed type app.update.enabled. It should be set to true, double-click on the line to set it to false.

Disabling Automatic Update in Thunderbird

On the top menu, click on Tools->Options to enter the Options window, then click on Advanced and select the General tab. Click on the Config Editor… button and the scary window saying “This might void you warranty !” should appear again. Just click on “I’ll be careful I promise!” to carry on.

Then in the Filter filed type app.update.enabled. It should be set to true, double-click on the line to set it to false.

Install a previous version of Thunderbird or Firefox.

I found that previous version of Thunderbird and Firefox are not always easy to find on the Mozilla Website. So If I want to downgrade my Firefox or Thunderbird, I usually go to OldApps website to find the previous versions:

Those pages may default to the Window versions, but you can also click on Linux or MacOS to get the version for your operating system.

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7 Comments
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Axel Grude
10 years ago

A good way to get at old versions of firefox or thunderbird is to go to one of their ftp servers:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/

Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
4 years ago

Disable FF & thunderbird auto updates

Justin
Justin
4 years ago

Hi.
I have the flag set to off but Thunderbird still wants to update itself…
Any other suggestion?
Thank you.

Chris Klopfenstein
Chris Klopfenstein
4 years ago

in FF68 there seems to be no such option: “app.update.enabled”. FF60 has it, so you can set it after installing FF60 (but before doing any restarts).

trevor
trevor
3 years ago

there is n app.update.enabled in my version

trevor
trevor
3 years ago

i don’t want to stop updates, I want to stop the box popping up asking me to update when i am using the latest version.

Khadas VIM4 SBC