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Let me preface this question by saying: It's crazy. I know it is. But the requirement is not mine, it's someone else's, and I'm trying to honor it.

I need to install a months-out-of-date version of Google Chrome so I can run repeated tests against it. But it's proving to be surprisingly difficult to turn Chrome updates off.

I did the trick of disabling the "Google Update" plugin in chrome://plugins. After that, I uninstalled Chrome and installed the old version. I double-checked that the version was the old version and that updating was non-functional ("error 3"). I didn't even see "Google Update" listed in chrome://plugins at all after this. So I thought I was good.

Then just now, I fired up Chrome to look at it again, and it was back to the newest version!

Is there something I overlooked? Are they doing some kind of black magic here?

L2G
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2 Answers2

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Windows

For Microsoft Windows, here is the simplest and lowest-impact solution I have found.

Create a text file with these lines:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update]
"AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes"=dword:00000000
"UpdateDefault"=dword:00000000

Save it to a file ending with ".reg" somewhere on your desktop. Double-click it to install new registry keys.

This disables automatic updates, and when you open "About Google Chrome" from the tool menu, you get the helpful message "Updates are disabled by the administrator."

Mac

(Instructions anyone may want to add for Mac OS can go here...)

L2G
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  1. Don't do this.
  2. Really. I wasn't kidding. Updates are important.
  3. See #1.
  4. You're still here, so I can only assume that you're crazy enough to really want to turn off updates: http://support.google.com/installer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146164 explains how you can disable updates via policy. Editing registry entries locally should be effective.
Mike West
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    1. I know. 2. I know. 3. I know. But there are industries where ad-hoc software updates in engineering run afoul of company procedures dictated by government regulations. I wish I was kidding. – L2G Mar 07 '13 at 19:37
  • We are also stuck with Windows XP and Ruby 1.9.2. So it's not all as bad as you think--it's worse. :-) – L2G Mar 07 '13 at 19:53
  • Does the registry entry not work for you? That's the supported mechanism for disabling updates, which more "enterprise" users then I care to think about use. – Mike West Mar 08 '13 at 17:34
  • At your insistence, I did try adding some new registry keys. (And I did have to _add_ them; they were not present before.) One of Google's own pages states that setting `HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update\AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes` to 0 is enough to disable updates, but this still allows updates to happen through "About Google Chrome"! I found that I had to set this key _and_ `HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update\UpdateDefault` to fully shut off updates. Now "About Google Chrome" tells me "Updates are disabled by the administrator" -- +1 for friendly message! – L2G Mar 14 '13 at 23:14
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    Why shouldnt he do this? – Nils Lindemann Sep 18 '18 at 14:25
  • God I hate people telling people not to do what they've asked how to do. Latest Chrome crashes literally every 5 minutes, you think I should stick with it?. – barneypitt May 14 '22 at 11:07