How do you completely turn off update checks in Firefox v64? You can use a policies.json file to disable updates for all users. https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/README.md or https://winaero.com/blog/disable-updates-firefox-63-above/

wow! looks like Firefox got even worse than I first thought :o I'm surprised that they really forgot to add a way to completely disable the unwanted updates. that's a really bad software development.

thanks for the help. I'm going to try to do it.

I am glad to hear that your problem has been resolved. If you haven't already, please select the answer that solves the problem. This will help other users with similar problems find the solution.

Thank you for contacting Mozilla Support.

It's not really solved, I'm still deciding on what to do. Probably I'll just end up quitting Firefox, since it's no longer a safe browser to use. I didn't enjoy to know that Firefox is intencionally forcing the users to update so... I'm really not sure if I should keep using this trash.

Paulgi said

wow! looks like Firefox got even worse than I first thought :o I'm surprised that they really forgot to add a way to completely disable the unwanted updates. that's a really bad software development. thanks for the help. I'm going to try to do it.

They didn't "forget". It was intentional. Along with making it impossible to turn off running in multi-process.

There is a trick to block the multi-process in advanced windows settings using a specific environment variable to block it. But it causes other issues.

If this truly is a "community" then they are ignoring the many complaints about both issues.

My "fix" was to go to the section where you can download every Firefox from the very first version. I downloaded 62.0.3 which is the last version where you could still select to not even check for updates. If you're only bothered with multi-process problems then the last release of version 67 works. (But since you can't turn off updates you'll end up right back to version 72 as soon as you install version 67. (I tried.)

Even with version 62, you'll find that as soon as you launch it after installing, it will be downloading the latest version and will automatically install it when you restart FF. The update option is pre-set to auto-update.

So, for anyone choosing this step, download and install 62.0.3. Launch it... immediately go into >tools>options>general, scroll to Firefox Updates, and click never check for updates. You can click check but let me choose however, you'll be constantly bugged when opening FF that there is an update to install. (Sooner or later you'll click the wrong box and update it. Been there, done that.)

After this (DO NOT CLOSE FIREFOX YET) go to Control Panel>Folder Options>View Tab>and click show hidden files, folders....

Now go to C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\updates and delete the update that should be there. It will have a hexidecimal type file name. EG: 308046B0AF4A39CB

NOTE: <yourusername> is the name of your computer that should be visible when you're in the "users" directory.

Close all the open windows and you should be good to restart firefox without it updating.

Hope this helps someone.

Paulgi said

It's not really solved, I'm still deciding on what to do. Probably I'll just end up quitting Firefox, since it's no longer a safe browser to use. I didn't enjoy to know that Firefox is intencionally forcing the users to update so... I'm really not sure if I should keep using this trash.

I don't think it's trash. I'm reluctant to totally abandon it because there are many add-ons and plug-ins that I don't think are available in other browsers. And I use a number of them.

Unfortunately, the standard "canned" answer for forcing updates is "security issues" but they don't tell you what security issues, which would allow you to make an intelligent choice to update or not. (Before they took the option away.)

I still trust FF to give me better privacy than any others. (Chrome in particular, simply because it's a google product and google is rampant about "monetizing you" in every possible way.

Hopefully Mozilla will return the options to turn off updates and multi-process with a future release but.... considering the number of complaints about both of them - not just here but across the entire web - I'm not holding my breath.

Magelord said

My "fix" was . . . . I downloaded 62.0.3

I saw where Firefox was going and stopped updating with v54. So far, no real problems.

I'm wondering if - at least as far as the update issue is concerned - this isn't a potential liability issue for Mozilla.

IE: By making it impossible to turn off updates, no one can blame Mozilla for their computer being attacked.

I'm more of a "personal responsibility" guy where I feel that if I turn off the updates - and get into trouble because of it - that I've got no one to blame but myself.

But I realize that not everyone is, and court cases to defend yourself can get expensive even if it's a slam dunk you'll win.

Just a thought.

Magelord said

I'm wondering if - at least as far as the update issue is concerned - this isn't a potential liability issue for Mozilla. IE: By making it impossible to turn off updates, no one can blame Mozilla for their computer being attacked. I'm more of a "personal responsibility" guy where I feel that if I turn off the updates - and get into trouble because of it - that I've got no one to blame but myself. But I realize that not everyone is, and court cases to defend yourself can get expensive even if it's a slam dunk you'll win. Just a thought.

I've been using Firefox since Firefox exist, and I never minded to have it always up to date. Unfortunately Firefox 72 is an absolute trash. It's ultra slow, unsafe, it crashes a lot, displays all sites wrongly, most common features no longer work, it's unspeakably hideous, that's why many people are trying to stop this update.

I managed to reinstall Firefox 71, it works great, but it's so stupidly design that every single time I open Firefox it asks me to update.

I really enjoyed Firefox for many years, and I'm really trying to continue to use it. But they are making it really hard and I don't even understand why they try so hard to force users to update for a broken version.

Paulgi said

Magelord said

I'm wondering if - at least as far as the update issue is concerned - this isn't a potential liability issue for Mozilla. IE: By making it impossible to turn off updates, no one can blame Mozilla for their computer being attacked. I'm more of a "personal responsibility" guy where I feel that if I turn off the updates - and get into trouble because of it - that I've got no one to blame but myself. But I realize that not everyone is, and court cases to defend yourself can get expensive even if it's a slam dunk you'll win. Just a thought.

I've been using Firefox since Firefox exist, and I never minded to have it always up to date. Unfortunately Firefox 72 is an absolute trash. It's ultra slow, unsafe, it crashes a lot, displays all sites wrongly, most common features no longer work, it's unspeakably hideous, that's why many people are trying to stop this update.

I managed to reinstall Firefox 71, it works great, but it's so stupidly design that every single time I open Firefox it asks me to update.

I really enjoyed Firefox for many years, and I'm really trying to continue to use it. But they are making it really hard and I don't even understand why they try so hard to force users to update for a broken version.

I've also been using Firefox since it first came out. And Netscape before that. Always liked it and the extra security/privacy it offers.

I'm not sure if it was version 72 or not but with the most recent updates I noticed similar. Very slow operation, which I think on my own computer, is because you can't turn off the multi-process (you'll see many instances of firefox running in your task manager process tab if you look) and also as you mention, sites don't load correctly. Text on top of text, items in the wrong spots, etc. Also on a number of discussion forums I'm on that use vBulletin as their software, editing functions disappeared. Ctrl-B for bold, Ctrl-I for italics, etc. With version 72, those key combinations just open up a local "Bookmark" menu. The codes are not passed on to the web sites. And I spent hours trying to fix it.

Everything and every site works fine with the older version I went back to. (62)

Firefox developers must have changed in the latest years and the new developers must be among the dumbest developers in the world.

The idea to force users to update the browser for an unwanted broken version, every time a user launches the application, was already totally retarded, but after a couple of weeks manually rejecting the stupid update looks like there's a programmed behavior change. Now it's asking for the update every time i change tab.

This guys from Firefox went too far. This is an absolutely jerk move.

After so many years using, promoting and supporting Firefox, it's really sad to see this horrible attitude and total incompetence. It clearly turned into the worst browser choice possible :\

Now Firefox started to spam me with upgrade alerts even while i'm browsing in the same tab and even after reject it a couple of times less than 5 minutes before. It's official... the Firefox developers are now the biggest jerks in the software industry.

Paulgi said

Now Firefox started to spam me with upgrade alerts even while i'm browsing in the same tab and even after reject it a couple of times less than 5 minutes before. It's official... the Firefox developers are now the biggest jerks in the software industry.

I can't believe it. I mean, I know you're speaking the truth. But it's almost as if the developers are going beyond ignoring complaints like this. They are now reinforcing the issues that have us complaining and stepping up the "forcing".

NOTE TO DEVELOPERS: This was - IMO - a very stupid move.

When you start to not only ignore complaints but step up efforts to force the updates on "us", at least some of us are going to start questioning why, since we don't get details on what was "fixed" and so "necessary" with each update.

People are bound to get suspicious. Especially when Firefox has been trusted for so long to maintain our privacy and block us from "tracking".

So at this point, I'm going to go with "follow the money". IE: I have suspicions you are "monetizing" Firefox to generate revenue. And unless we are forced to update, you don't get the benefit of those changes.

Feedback would be nice from Mozilla, to either confirm or deny this.

I'm not trying to stir up trouble with this. I'd just like to know why you took "options" away from the user, and apparently just reinforced that effort, and we aren't told why.

If you want to leave feedback for Firefox developers, you can go to the Firefox Help menu and select Submit Feedback... or use this link. Your feedback gets collected by a team of people who read it and gather data about the most common issues.

Did either of you guys even try what Fred McD posted here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1277948#answer-1283385 - about turning off Firefox program updates via Policies?

Two ways of doing it were offered; one via the Windows Registry and the other via a policies.json file you can create in Firefox. Plus it was discussed here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/713220 - in Oct 2018. Found thru the Search function for this fora.

As far as Firefox 72 being a "broken update" - neither of you two have posted a question here about the issues you are facing with the Firefox 72 update, nor have made any mention of trying the 72.0.1 or 72.0.2 "chem spill" updates to see if your issues were resolved.

Magelord said

Paulgi said

Now Firefox started to spam me with upgrade alerts even while i'm browsing in the same tab and even after reject it a couple of times less than 5 minutes before. It's official... the Firefox developers are now the biggest jerks in the software industry.

I can't believe it. I mean, I know you're speaking the truth. But it's almost as if the developers are going beyond ignoring complaints like this. They are now reinforcing the issues that have us complaining and stepping up the "forcing".

NOTE TO DEVELOPERS: This was - IMO - a very stupid move.

When you start to not only ignore complaints but step up efforts to force the updates on "us", at least some of us are going to start questioning why, since we don't get details on what was "fixed" and so "necessary" with each update.

People are bound to get suspicious. Especially when Firefox has been trusted for so long to maintain our privacy and block us from "tracking".

So at this point, I'm going to go with "follow the money". IE: I have suspicions you are "monetizing" Firefox to generate revenue. And unless we are forced to update, you don't get the benefit of those changes.

Feedback would be nice from Mozilla, to either confirm or deny this.

I'm not trying to stir up trouble with this. I'd just like to know why you took "options" away from the user, and apparently just reinforced that effort, and we aren't told why.

I'm particularly shocked because I never expected this kind of behavior from Firefox developers, specially knowing now that this is not a bug but an intentional scheme to force the update.

I can't even understand the reason that led them to remove the option to delay the update alert and what they win with this actions.

I'm going to try to contact Mozilla, I don't expect any answer, but I'd really love to understand their motives.

the-edmeister said

Did either of you guys even try what Fred McD posted here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1277948#answer-1283385 - about turning off Firefox program updates via Policies? Two ways of doing it were offered; one via the Windows Registry and the other via a policies.json file you can create in Firefox. Plus it was discussed here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/713220 - in Oct 2018. Found thru the Search function for this fora. As far as Firefox 72 being a "broken update" - neither of you two have posted a question here about the issues you are facing with the Firefox 72 update, nor have made any mention of trying the 72.0.1 or 72.0.2 "chem spill" updates to see if your issues were resolved.

I already told above, that Firefox 72, I think it was 72.0.1, was running ultra slow, and by "ultra slow" I mean that it was taking minutes to open any basic text page. Firefox also became incompatible with hardware acceleration on my system, it was crashing a lot and I rarely see a crash since 1998, and it was loading many pages with conflicts.

Obviously I removed all addons, I don't use many but at first I thought that it could be some addon conflict, I also reset all settings a tried a clean install, but, Firefox 72 is definitely not compatible with my Windows 10 system with everything updated.

After lots of tries and a lot of wasted time, I decided to reinstall Firefox 71 and it's running fast and flawless in my system. The only problem is that stupid update alert spam every 5 minutes or so. It's crazy.

At this moment I just want to keep using the version 71 in peace.

I posted the links to stop the updates. Why are you still asking?

the-edmeister said

Did either of you guys even try what Fred McD posted here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1277948#answer-1283385 - about turning off Firefox program updates via Policies? Two ways of doing it were offered; one via the Windows Registry and the other via a policies.json file you can create in Firefox. Plus it was discussed here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/713220 - in Oct 2018. Found thru the Search function for this fora. As far as Firefox 72 being a "broken update" - neither of you two have posted a question here about the issues you are facing with the Firefox 72 update, nor have made any mention of trying the 72.0.1 or 72.0.2 "chem spill" updates to see if your issues were resolved.

Hi Ed:

I can't speak for Paulgi but I tried both of those. Also another one from github where you go into windows advanced settings and create an environment variable that should prevent updates.

The first of the two above didn't work. The second one did work but other issues cropped up. (Can't recall now what they were.)

The third one (advanced environment variable) did work as well but caused a lot of other issues. (The person that posted that fix, indicated it would and he'd seen a few as well.

What it boils down to is that I don't like the idea of messing around with external settings trying to override the internal ones coded into Firefox. Too much chance of running into other issues.

The proper fix is for Mozilla to put the ability to turn off updates back into Firefox because it will be (hopefully) coded correctly so that it doesn't "break" other things.

And as I've mentioned, the updates were only one issue for me. The inability to turn off multi-process is also a problem for me. Along with other more subtle issues that seem to have "broken" a number of sites I use. The most evident being the text editors used in the better known forum software apps. The newest (70 to 72) updates disabled the standard editing codes that were passed on to the sites.

IE: Ctrl-B (bold), Ctrl-I (italics), Ctrl-U (underline), etc. etc. One site owner and I spent days trying to figure out if vBulletin had made changes to their code to filter out the editing controls. Then I finally got an answer from someone on the vBulletin support forums that they were getting reports of this problem, only from Firefox users, and only those using version 70 and above.

I switched back to version 62 and that fixed every issue I was running into. I can completely use the editors on every forum I use, I can turn off Firefox updates and, I can force Firefox into single process rather than multi-process.

See next post for WHY I want multi-process turned off.

Multi-process issues:

I do a lot of research and prefer to use windows rather than tabs. (Although the problem crops up with tabs as well.)

Sometimes 20+ windows open.

Firefox has a long known history of eating memory to the point that it slows down your computer. (And causes a lot of other issues when it happens as well... new windows are black, other pages stop responding, etc.)

Firemin helps with this whether you're in single or multi-process. But regardless, firefox will start slowing down even though the task manager says firefox isn't using much memory. (The "Rammap" windows utility will show a huge chunk of memory used but not attached to any program though.)

The fix then, is to close firefox completely, then restart it.

You can do this by either right clicking the Firefox icon in the task bar and selecting "close all windows" or by going into task manager, click the firefox.exe line, and then "end process".

When you restart firefox it's fine for a few hours. Just "restore previous session" and all your previously open windows come back. You don't generally lose any work.

This works absolutely fine IF you have disabled multi-process in firefox.

But it's very different when multi-process is running.

Firefox slows down..... you go to the icon and close all windows, and only SOME of them will close. You do it again, a few more will close. Eventually, you'll get them all closed.

Then when you restart firefox, only the very last set of windows you closed, will restart. The rest are gone. You have to go into history and start trying to find the ones you remembered having open. If you opened them several days ago, it will take quite awhile to find them all as you're going back days..... you could have opened hundreds of windows since that one you want was last loaded.

This is because when you "close all windows" it's only closing the windows in that one process running when you perform the function.

And there might have been 10 processes running.

Task manager is no help as the exact same thing happens. You go to task manager and see say 10 instances of firefox.exe running. You can click one and then "End Task" but you'll still have 9 open. Close another, 8 open. Etc. etc. until you finally close the last instance.

Then when you restart firefox the only windows you can get back are the ones that closed with the last instance of firefox.exe you closed in the task manager.

The problem seems to be that every instance (or "process") runs on it's own, independent of the others, and ignorant of the others. The only common connection seems to be the task bar icon that shows every window with one click. (But no idea which process is running which windows.)

It's likely possible that the coders can "link" the processes in some way so that if you close one of them by force (either "Close all windows" in the task bar or "End process" in the task manager) it will cause them all to close at the same time. And hopefully remember ALL the windows you had open when you did it.

I'm surprised that others haven't run into this. Or if they have, not complained about it. Most of the complaints I hear say that multi-process slows down computers a lot if they have lower tier processors (like older Intel Core 2 duo) or lower amounts of RAM. (less than 4GB.)

In my case I the slow downs are very noticeable after a couple of days and I'm running an Intel i7, 3 GHz processor and 12 GB of RAM.