How to disable the automatic update of Chrome 🥇 Your browser

Discover how to disable chrome auto update. Chrome is the most powerful browser used by 65% of people around the world. Unfortunately Google forces some features in Chrome like no option to remove bookmarks bar and not possible to remove favicons on new tab page

However, Google introduced additional options to disable the bookmarks bar and remove favicons with version 69.

Different Ways to Disable Chrome Auto Update

But auto-update is still an annoying feature forced on users. In this article, we will explain how to disable Chrome auto-update on Windows and Mac computers.

How auto-update works in Chrome

Chrome uses the Google Update feature which in turn uses an open source program called for automatic updating. The automatic update runs and checks for the latest version every time you connect to the Internet with a frequency of 5 hours.

The automatic update also runs every time you access the settings page. For example, go to the command URL “chrome://settings/help” and you will see that the automatic update will start immediately.

Chrome auto-update

Please note that the open source Chromium browser does not have the auto-update feature. Only Google Chrome has this on Windows and Mac, even it doesn’t have auto-update on Linux platform.

Why the automatic update can be annoying

Automatic updates are good for keeping your browser secure and up to date. The problem arises when there are changes in the functionalities. For example, it used to be very easy to create a shortcut to a website in Chrome. Now this has been changed to make life difficult for the previous user.

There should be a lot of buy-in when you suddenly lose a feature you’ve been using for years. There are no options in Chrome to disable this auto-update feature or go back to the previous version of the browser.

Therefore, you must forcefully use the latest version whether you like it or not.

How to disable auto-update in Chrome

For whatever reason you want to stop Chrome automatic updates, you can do it in just a few steps. This post will walk you through the process of disabling Chrome automatic updates.

Rename the update folder (Windows)
Using Windows System Settings (Windows)
From Windows Services Manager (Windows)
Disable use of registry editor (Windows)
Change Auto Update URL (Mac)
Point all auto update URLs to localhost (Windows and Mac)
Modify plist file (Mac)

1. Change the name of the Google Chrome update folder (Windows)

This is one of the easiest methods that anyone can do without any hassle to disable Chrome auto-update.

In Windows 10, go to the Chrome installation drive, which is usually the C: drive.
Then navigate to “C:\Program Files\Google\”.
You will see the “Update” folder. Try renaming this folder; if it can, this will disable chrome update. In most cases, you cannot rename this folder.
Open the “Update” folder and rename the “GoogleUpdate” application file to something like “GoogleUpdate1”.

Change the name of the Google update app

Now go to Chrome and check the URL “chrome://settings/help”.
You should see an error on the automatic update as shown below.

chrome update error

On Mac, you can go to “Users > Your Mac Drive > Library > Google > GoogleSoftwareUpdate” and rename this folder.

Unfortunately, when you check for auto-update, Chrome will recreate this folder and run auto-update. So renaming this folder doesn’t work on Mac.

Change the auto update folder on Mac

2. Disable Chrome Automatic Update from Windows System Settings (Windows)

Open the “Run” command by pressing the “Win + R” hotkeys or type “Run” in the Windows search box, and select the run command.
Type “msconfig” and click OK or press “Enter” to open the system configuration panel.

Run command to open system configuration

In the system configuration window, select the “Services” tab. At the bottom of the window, uncheck the box to the left of “Hide all Microsoft services.”
Browse the list of services and uncheck “Google Update (gupdate)” and “Google Update (gupdatem)”.

Disable Chrome updates in system settings

Click the “Apply” button and then “OK” to save your changes.
When prompted to restart the PC, click “Restart” for the changes to take effect.

3. Disable Chrome updates from Windows Services Manager (Windows)

Open command » Run » by searching for “Run” in Cortana or by pressing the “Win + R” keys on the keyboard. Type “services.msc” and click “OK”. This will open the service manager window.

Open services using the Run command

Alternatively, type “control” in Windows or Cortana search and select the “Control Panel”, select “System and Security” and scroll down and then click on “Administrative Tools”.
Double click on “Services” to open the service manager screen.
Look for “Google Update (gupdate)” and “Google Update (gupdatem)” in the list.
Double click both (each at a time) and in the “General” tab under “Startup type” choose the “Disabled” option and then click OK.

Disable Chrome Update Services

Just like in Google Chrome, you can also disable automatic updating in Windows 10 to avoid unexpected issues and data loss.

4. Disable Chrome Auto Update from Registry Editor (Windows)

You can also prevent Chrome from updating automatically by editing the registry keys.

From the “Run” utility keys “Win + R”, type “regedit” and click “OK” to open the registry editor.
In the registry editor, open the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” folder. You can double click the folder or click the arrow to open.
Open the “SOFTWARE” folder and scroll down to “Policies”.
Right-click on the “Policies” folder, select “New” and then click on “Key”.
Rename the newly created key to “Google”.
Right-click on the “Google” folder, select “New”, then click on “Key” and rename the key to “Update”.
On the right side of the registry editor, right-click on the blank space below the “Default” option and select “New” and then choose “DWORD”.

Create new DWORD entry

Rename the new key to “Updatedefault”.
Double-click on “Updatedefault” to edit the DWORD value and set the “Value data” to 0.

Set value data

Click “OK” to save changes and exit “Registry Editor”.

If this doesn’t work, try creating additional DWORD keys and setting the values as shown below:

DWORD: AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes and Value: 0 DWORD: DisableAutoUpdateChecksCheckboxValue and Value: 1

5. Change Chrome Auto Update URL (Mac)

Just like on Windows, you can follow some tricks to disable Chrome auto-update on macOS. On Mac, try changing Chrome’s auto-update URL to disable updating.

Open Finder and go to the “Applications” folder.
Right click or control + click on the Google Chrome folder and go to “Show packaged content”.
Click on the “Content” folder and open the “Info.plist” file. Remember that you must have editors like Xcode to open the plist file. You must also have write permission for both the “Content” folder and the “Info.plist” file to edit.

Edit Information List File on Mac

Find the key “KSUpdateURL”. In our case, this points to “https://tools.google.com/service/update2”.
Just rename the file to something else and save the changes.

Change Chrome Auto Update URL on Mac

If this doesn’t work, you may need to disable all update URLs that Google uses for Chrome.

6. Block Chrome Update URLs (Windows and Mac)

Google uses one of the following services for the update service. Therefore, you can block these domains by using the hosts file on Windows and Mac to disable auto-update in Chrome browser.

However, later on, if Google uses a different URL for the update, the browser will continue to update automatically.

google.com/dl/*
Google com/*
com / dl / *
* .gvt1.com
google.com/service/update2
Google com
googleapis.com/service/update2
Google com

7. Modify the update interval on Mac

On Mac, you can change the refresh rate interval to stop automatic updating.

Open Finder and navigate to the “Go > Go to Folder…” menu item.
Enter the path “~/Library/Preferences” and press the Enter key.
You will see many preferences files and look for the file “com.google.Keystone.Agent.plist”.

Edit Chrome List File on Mac

Open the file using the Xcode editor or any other XML editor like TextWrangler. Remember, you can’t edit a plist file using TextEdit or other normal editors.
The default key string for “checkInterval” is 18000. Change the key string value to 0.

Change update check interval

Save your file and close.
If you don’t have Xcode or can’t edit the plist file, press “Command + Spacebar” and type “terminal”. Open the Terminal app and enter the following command.

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0

This will set the value in the plist file as explained above.

Now that auto update should not work on your Chrome browser.

conclusion

Chrome auto-updating is not a problem for most users, but it is possible to stop it when necessary. Google does not recommend stopping these updates as they are essential to improve your browsing experience and security.

It’s important to understand that by disabling Chrome updates, you could be leaving yourself vulnerable to serious security issues while also missing out on some useful new features. If for any reason you want…