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Emilio
Asked: 2022-06-04 07:59:09 +0800 CST

How to solve "Pending update of "firefox" snap. Close the app to avoid disruptions" error?

  • 772

Recently, this warning appears when open Firefox:

Pending update of "firefox" snap

Close the app to avoid disruptions

What does it mean? And what do I have to do? Is this a bug?

firefox

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you have received a notification of a pending Firefox update it will appear as a small bell icon next to the clock in the top panel. Clicking on the bell will show a Firefox pending update notification as shown in the below screenshot.

    enter image description here

    As soon as you see the Pending update of "firefox" snap. Close the app to avoid disruptions (13 days left) notification (which means you have 13 days to upgrade Firefox yourself or else the Firefox snap package will get an unattended upgrade) close Firefox and then reopen it after updating the Firefox snap package is finished. If the pending update to the Firefox snap package has not started yet, it can be initiated by running sudo snap refresh. If you don't close Firefox after Firefox has finished being updated, then you will be unable to open any new tabs until you close Firefox and then reopen it.

    • 70

  2. The above only works if you actually close firefox, otherwise the snap will not refresh, and running snap refresh will not even tell that it held an update back.

    The formula that worked for me:

    killall firefox;
sudo snap refresh;

    But the user experience sucks. It was far more slick using apt, and starting firefox on older machines seems quite a lot slower too.

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  3. The message says...

    Close the app to avoid disruptions

    It would be more helpful if it told you to close the app, and leave it closed for a day or so (with the computer running), to allow the pending update to occur in the background. The assumption is that this process, itself, will not be a "disruption".

    The faster solution, assuming you're willing to put up with snap shenanigans, is to run snap refresh --list in order to identify any pending updates, then close the associated apps before running sudo snap refresh, then repeat this sequence to make sure you were successful.

    Here's a session log, further demonstrating that you can't take snap messages at face value. Hopefully, there's enough hints here to make snap updates more manageable.

    $ sudo snap refresh
All snaps up to date.

$ snap refresh --list
Name      Version        Rev   Size   Publisher   Notes
chromium  103.0.5060.53  2020  139MB  canonical✓  -

$ snap refresh --time
timer: 00:00~24:00/4
last: today at 14:55 MDT
next: today at 19:03 MDT
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  4. How to disable snap notifications on the Settings UI

    This is not ideal as you will miss out on the latest security updates. But if the thing is going to keep annoying me every other day, I can't stand it anymore.

    • Settings ("Windows key" and search "Settings")
    • Notifications
    • Snapd User Session Agent
    • Slide Notifications left

    Tested on Ubuntu 22.04. Learnt from: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/how-to-disable-snapd-update-notifications-permanently/31117/2

    It is not like I leave my laptop on suspend every night, I shut it down every day, thus shutting down the browser, and even then the update is not automatic. That system is just too user unfriendly. Devs need to implement a system that automatically downloads security updates, and that they take effect when you restart the program. A notification should only show after e.g. after 24 hours of being outdated.

    Bibliography:

    enter image description here

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  5. Here's an all GUI, app specific solution:

    • Close the app in need of updating
    • Open the Ubuntu Software app
    • Click "Installed" (to list only software already on your machine)
    • Click on the app to update
    • Click "Update"
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  6. Just close Firefox and then run these commands:

    sudo snap refresh
sudo snap refresh firefox
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