Brave AutoUpdate: How to stop it?

Chocolate · September 16, 2024, 7:42pm

@RapidAutoDude here is a topic being worked on this new feature. enable updates / and disable updates

and you can find it here on github

github.com/brave/brave-browser

Add a "Disable autoupdate" feature (disable updates)

opened 01:51PM - 07 Aug 19 UTC

willemavjc

security suggestion design priority/P5 feature/updater OS/Desktop

## Brave staff comment (by @bsclifton) Hi folks! Thanks for the feedback here … I'd like to share ways that you can disable automatic updates for Brave. **This is not something we recommend** which is why there is no user interface for this (and no work to add one is planned). ### Windows You can open an admin command prompt and run the following: `REG.EXE ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\BraveSoftware\UpdateDev" /v LastCheckPeriodSec /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f` If you prefer to do manually, you can open `regedit.exe`, create a new key under `HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\BraveSoftware\UpdateDev` and add a new DWORD value with the name `LastCheckPeriodSec` and value set to `0` ![image](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/assets/4733304/3678e628-514d-48fb-bdbf-5bc8cb909fbf) If you're on 32-bit Windows, you'll want to remove the `WOW6432Node` portion of that registry path. NOTE: this does NOT stop updating if you manually visit the brave://settings/help page. This page will always check for updates manually. It won't update until you click the relaunch button though (or if you exit). Windows can also use the group policy. For the group policy for UPDATES to take effect, the computer must be joined to a domain w/ active directory. We do plan on offering the admin templates for that use-case - please see https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/26503. ### macOS When launching Brave from command line, you can pass the `--disable-brave-update` argument. ### Linux If you're using Ubuntu Snaps, you can disable the updates. [See here for more information](https://merlijn.sebrechts.be/blog/2022-11-10-turn-off-snap-updates/). But basically, you can do `snap refresh --hold`. Installing via a package manager (ex: apt, pacman, etc) is going to give the best experience on Linux. For more info, see https://brave.com/linux/. You can migrate from an Ubuntu Snap to a regular install - but need to copy your profile over. At this point, you are controlling when the updates happen. When doing `apt update` / `apt upgrade`, be conscious about if Brave is listed and if you want to update it. You may see a notice that you're out of date, which can be annoying. You can use the `--disable-features` command line arg when calling Brave to hide this notice. For example: ``` brave-browser --disable-features=OutdatedBuildDetector ``` ## Original issue description Brave is really nice web browser. I truly think it is. But these days, it rather tends to become a bummer due to a simple thing on which a part of the community is divided and some key people are a bit stubborn: **"Disabling autoupdate"**. This follows up several issues on the same subject which were all closed, and so I believe it will happen for this one but I still think this is a required feature. So please implement it. **Really, make it happen.** Why? - For all the real (and good) reasons that have been written and discussed (@cnst if you hear me) - Because Brave is also an imperfect software holding **bugs** in its pretended "stable" releases To contributors arguing that disabling autoupdate is a bad thing because you want to guarantee the most secure experience I would say that in fact you are not. Even if you do code a nice software, the releases you believe stables are not that perfect. For example, an autoupdate frequently lead to a **loss of the opened tabs.** And this is clearly annoying: the articles you were reading? Gone. The submissions you were drafting on with no autosave? Lost. Etc. And the list can be long sometimes: The "Downloads" section listing stuff downloaded? Feature no longer working. Oops! Plus, these autoupdates do not warn their coming: You just get some sort of ugly (inner) app kill and that's all. Not even a restart. Even MS Windows do it better: you got a pop-up asking for a window, with a shift option!! Clearly, the user experience just gone worse. The aim of this issue is not to score on one side versus the other (devs vs/ users) but to make more obvious that people should have the right to use or not such a feature; I believe Brave was not made by a few people for these few people only but rather a (democratic) community, right? **References:** https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/1877 https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/10863 ## Brave version (brave://version info) 0.67.123 on Windows 10 18362

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Brave AutoUpdate: How to stop it?

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