Enable or Disable Automatic Updates in Firefox

I don’t like Firefox constantly updating the version or the Add-ons all by itself  at startup without my knowledge. You can enable or disable automatic updates in Firefox with these steps.

From Firefox Menus

1. Select the “Menu”  button in the upper-right corner, then choose “Options“.
2. Select “General” on the left pane.
3. Scroll down to the “Firefox Updates” section.
4. Select one of the following options as desired:
   • Automatically install updates
   • Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them
   • Never check for updates
5. Check or uncheck the “Use a background service to install updates” option as desired.

From about:config Menu

1. Type “about:config” in the address bar, then press “Enter“.
2. Search for the “app.update.auto” setting.
3. Double-click the “app.update.auto” option to toggle the setting. If set to “true“, automatic updates are enabled. If set to “false“, automatic updates are disabled.

Via prefs.js file

1. Close Firefox.
2. Navigate to the following location based on your operating system.
   • Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10 – “%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox“
   • Unix/Linux – “~/.mozilla/“
   • Mac OS X – “~/Library/Mozilla/” or “~/Library/Application Support/“
3. Open the “Profiles” folder.
4. Open the folder that represents the profile you would like to edit. The name of the folder will vary. It is usually a bunch of characters, followed by “.default”.
5. Open the prefs.js file with a text editor like Notepad.
6. Look for a line that contains app.update.enabled. If it doesn’t exist, add a line for it in the file and set it as desired using these examples:
   • user_pref("app.update.enabled", true); = Automatic updates enabled
   • user_pref("app.update.enabled", false); = Automatic updates disabled