How To Disable Auto Update on Google Chrome

By default Google Chrome is set to automatically download and install any updates that have been released. There is no option within Chrome to just turn off updates.

In this article I will show you how you can disable auto updates for Google Chrome.

There are a few ways you can disable auto updates in google chrome, I will show you all the ways below

Delete Google Chrome Update File

To disable updates within google chrome do the following

Make sure Google Chrome has been closed
Open file explorer
browse to C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Update or C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Update
In the update folder there will be a GoogleUpdate.exe file, right click on this file and select delete.
No reopen Google Chrome
Click on the three dots top right of the browser, then select help > About Google Chrome
You will see a message checking for updates
You should then see “An error occurred while checking for updates, update check failed to start (error code 3: 0x800800005 – System level”

We have now disabled updates within the browser, There are a few more steps we need to perform to make sure that the GoogleUpdate.exe file does not come back.

If you have any questions about this process please leave us a comment below

Disable Google Chrome Updates In System Configuration

Every time your machine boots in to windows it runs a few programs in the startup list. We need to remove two programs from this list as these programs could restore the GoogleUpdate.exe file. To do this

Click on start and type in msconfig and then click on System Configuration
In the system configuration application tick the box “Hide All Microsoft Services”
Now untick the two boxes next to “Google Update Service (gpupdate)” and “Google Update Service (gpupdatem)”
Click Ok
Click Exit without restart

If you have any questions about this process please leave us a comment below

Disable Google Chrome Update Services

Next we need to disable the google chrome update services from the windows services list. To do this

Click start and type in services.msc and click on the services application
In the services window scroll down to “Google Update Service (gpupdate)”
Double click on “Google Update Service (gpupdate)”
Click on Stop
For startup type select disabled
Click Ok
Repeat the above steps for the “Google Update Service (gupdatem)” service

If you have any questions about this process please leave us a comment below

Disable Google Chrome Updates In Registry

We can set a registry entry which will also tell google chrome not to check for updates. To do this

Click start and type in notepad and click on the notepade application
Copy the below text and paste it in to notepadWindows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update]
“Updatedefault”=dword:00000000
“AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes”=dword:00000000
“DisableAutoUpdateChecksCheckboxValue”=dword:00000001
Click file > save as
Click on save as type and select all files
Enter a file name followed by .reg, in the below example i have put chrome.reg
Make a note of the save as path (Below is C:\ESD)
Click save
Now browse to where you saved the .reg file and double click on it
Click yes

If you have any questions about this process please leave us a comment below

Conclusion

A few years back there use to be a built in setting which allowed us to disable updates, But google have changed that with the latest versions of chrome.

Google Chrome can be a pain to disable auto updates as you need to perform many steps to make sure 100 % that it has been disabled.

Many guides will show you a lot more steps to perform, I have shown you only the steps that you need to implement. If you do try this on your machine please let me know how you get on by leaving us a comment below