INFORMATICS

Thunderbird auto update

You can enable or disable automatic updates in Thunderbird with these steps.

• Select the Menu - Tools button in the upper-right corner, then choose “Options“.
• Select “Advanced“.
• Choose the “Update” tab.

• Select on of the following options as desired:
  • Automatically install updates (recommended: improved security)
  • Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them
  • Never check for updates (not recommended: security risk)

From about:config Menu

1. Type “about:config” in the address bar, then press “Enter“.
2. Search for the “app.update.auto” setting.
3. Double-click the “app.update.auto” option to toggle the setting. If set to “true“, automatic updates are enabled. If set to “false“, automatic updates are disabled.

4. app.update.auto - false

   app.update.enabled - false

   app.update.silent - false

Via prefs.js file

1. Close Thunderbird.
2. Navigate to the following location based on your operating system.
   • Windows XP/Vista/7/8 – “%APPDATA%\Mozilla\“
   • Windows Server 2008 2012 Roaming Profiles c:\Users\........\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\........default\
   • Unix/Linux – “~/.mozilla/“
   • Mac OS X – “~/Library/Mozilla/” or “~/Library/Application Support/“
3. Open the “Profiles” folder.
4. Open the folder that represents the profile - “.default”.
5. Open the prefs.js file with a text editor - Notepad.
6. Look for a line that contains “app.update.enabled”. If it doesn’t exist, add a line for it in the file and set it as desired using these examples:
   • user_pref(“app.update.enabled”, true); = Automatic updates enabled
   • user_pref(“app.update.enabled”, false); = Automatic updates disabled
7. Add line:    // turn off application updates:
   user_pref("app.update.enabled", false);
8. Start thunderbird
9. Check Advanced - Updates.