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.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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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/
@Axel Grude
Thanks for the link, better to go to the original source. At the time, I could not find it.
Disable FF & thunderbird auto updates
Hi.
I have the flag set to off but Thunderbird still wants to update itself…
Any other suggestion?
Thank you.
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).
there is n app.update.enabled in my version
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.