Firefox Version 65.0.1 (32-bit), I can't find an enterprise solution to un-check "Automatically update search engines"
I work for a company that manages installs of Firefox. We just updated to version 65.0.1. We have a file called "policies.json" that gets copied over during the install. This is to disable the Check for Updates button. After installing the new version we are getting pop ups to update Firefox. Although the check for updates button is grayed out, we noticed the Automatically update search engines has a check next to it. How do we set up the policies.json to un-check this box? We are now getting pop up's asking about updates. {
"policies": { "DisableAppUpdate": true }
}
Wšykne wótegrona (5)
(I'm going to flag this post for a moderator to move it over to Enterprise.)
The corresponding preference in about:config is called
browser.search.update
I don't know whether there is a policy key for that or whether you need to override it using an Autoconfig file.
With this "DisableAppUpdate": true policy Firefox shouldn't ask for updates.
You can check the about:policies#active page to see what policies are active. You can check the Browser Console for specific error messages.
I haven't found that to be the case with the new version 65. We had all this in place and started getting the update pop ups once Firefox updated. What I did find was the Prefs.js in the user profile, located at \AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. You can change this file to overwrite prefs.js by adding , user_pref("browser.search.update", false); and this will un-check that box. The next issue is for deploying over a network or a new build. The profile is not created till Firefox is run. So I'm working on a script to install, open Firefox and create the profile then have the prefs.js overwrite the original.
You might be working too hard replacing prefs.js in individual profiles. See:
We don't have a policy for that honestly because it doesn't really ever get used. But I understand some places have a need for it and I plan to add it.