Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

app.update.url seems to have no effect

billynoah
billynoah
more options

Newer version of Firefox have removed the ability to disable automatically checking for updates. In an effort to stop this from happening I tried changing the value of app.update.url from:

https://aus5.mozilla.org/update/6/%PRODUCT%/%VERSION%/%BUILD_ID%/%BUILD_TARGET%/%LOCALE%/%CHANNEL%/%OS_VERSION%/%SYSTEM_CAPABILITIES%/%DISTRIBUTION%/%DISTRIBUTION_VERSION%/update.xml

To a blank string. I even tried 127.0.0.1 but also had no effect. The only thing that worked was blocking traffic to aus5.mozilla.org which seems a bit extreme. What's going on here?

Newer version of Firefox have removed the ability to disable automatically checking for updates. In an effort to stop this from happening I tried changing the value of app.update.url from: https://aus5.mozilla.org/update/6/%PRODUCT%/%VERSION%/%BUILD_ID%/%BUILD_TARGET%/%LOCALE%/%CHANNEL%/%OS_VERSION%/%SYSTEM_CAPABILITIES%/%DISTRIBUTION%/%DISTRIBUTION_VERSION%/update.xml To a blank string. I even tried 127.0.0.1 but also had no effect. The only thing that worked was blocking traffic to aus5.mozilla.org which seems a bit extreme. What's going on here?

Modified by billynoah

All Replies (3)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
more options

Hi billynoah, as part of its increased Enterprise support, the option to block Firefox from checking for updates is now made available via an external Policy file.

For details, see:

Users who have tested this approach report it is a complete block: Firefox cannot discover updates even if you click the button in the About Firefox dialog. You can monitor the following page for new releases:

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

billynoah
billynoah Question owner
more options

Thanks - although your response is helpful, it does not answer my question about what's going on with the app.update.url setting, and what effect it has if any. Do you have any insight about that?

Modified by billynoah

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
more options

No idea about what normally happens when you modify the app.update.url setting.