How to disable the update manager popup?

Disabling the popups in the configuration seems not to be possible, as told by coteyr in the comments on this page (https://askubuntu.com/a/218780/19753: "It's important to note that other then removing update-manager-core you can't really stop the popup. You can just delay it till something else runs apt-get update" – coteyr Nov 18 '12 at 9:14).

I also wanted to get rid of the popups and of the underlying program that would consume the resources of my Ubuntu 12.04 system on a weak Toshiba AC100 (ARM) -- https://answers.launchpad.net/ac100/+question/214505/.

So the simplest working solution must be removing the "update-manager" (as I've mentioned in the comments at https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/46315/4319 ):

apt-get remove update-manager

I have had no problems after that because I could still use apt-get or synaptic to do package updates.

Useful comments:

antivirtel: on 16.10 it couldn't be removed, since it will remove other packages, like ubuntu-desktop. A possible solution: remove the binary file (/usr/bin/update-manager) or chmod -x /usr/bin/update-manager, and apt hold package to prevent updates (echo update-manager hold | sudo dpkg --set-selections).

mchid: ubuntu-desktop is a metapackage so you can remove it without removing the actual desktop so that shouldn't be a problem.

Dylan Parry: It's probably better to just remove update-notifier rather than the entire update manager. Remember to run pkill update-notifier after removing it (or reboot), otherwise Ubuntu will show an error in the indicator panel.

Open up the config file that runs the update-manager part after apt

nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99update-notifier

Add '#' infront of the line making it something similar to:

#DPkg::Post-Invoke {"if [ -d /var/lib/update-notifier ]; then touch /var/lib/update-notifier/dpkg-run-stamp; fi; if [ -e /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available ]; then echo > /var/lib/update-notifier/updates-available; fi "; };

Done.

This worked for me in stopping the update manager popping up after every apt update while still allowing me to run update-manager manually if i wanted to.

Just turning off notification of updates will not be enough. There are several background jobs that run apt-get update (including a nightly cron job if I remember right).

To stop the pop-up run update-manager

Then in settings, set Update automaticly to 'Never' and Notify of new version to 'Never'

I suggest leave security at immediately and, setting "others" to every two weeks.

You also need to make sure your not running apt-get update anywhere else. This can happen when you install software, run update-manager, or in a cron job.

If that doesn't work for you:

You can do this by

editing /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic and changeing

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";

to

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";

Last Resort

You can also do apt-get remove update-manager to remove the feature all together.

Edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and set:

Prompt=never change this with your favorite editor).

Never use update-manager with -d this checks whether the next release is available or not.

pkill update-notifier
sudo mv /usr/bin/update-notifier /usr/bin/update-notifier.real
echo -e '#!/bin/bash\nwhile :; do /bin/sleep 86400; done' | sudo tee /usr/bin/update-notifier
sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/update-notifier

Brutal, but effective.

It is good that Ubuntu automatically checks for updates, it is not good that it pops-up windows against your will. You can have less invasive notifications via the gnome bar or from terminal based applications (like Byobu).

To disable the update-notifier while leaving the update-manager automatically checking for updates, run the following from a terminal:

1. sudo apt-get install gconf-editor in case you don't have it already installed
2. sudo gconf-editor mind the sudo attribute
3. search for app->update-notifier and un-tick the "auto-launch" option
4. close the window
5. gconf-editor this time as a user (i.e. without sudo)
6. search again for app->update-notifier and change the "regular_auto_launch_interval" to the number of days you want it to wait before popping-up (0 is immediately, 1 one day, 99999999 basically never again)

You've set it to never check for updates, but you'll find the update manager is opening because it already knows there are updates to be done. Do the updates that it has and it won't bother you again until you update the file lists.

It's a bit like terminal will tell you when there are updates in the apt list that have been put there with 'apt-get update', and will keep on reminding you until you install them.

We have installed Ubuntu 20.04 on our local server and installed Lubuntu desktop on it for GUI. We have disabled the update-notifier pop up by uninstalling its package from the server. Below is the command of it.

# sudo apt-get --purge remove lubuntu-update-notifier

I think the above command will be helpful to you.

I do not like automatic updates so I want to disable them always. I use Ubuntu 14.04 with Gnome desktop environment. gsettings may not be available in other Ubuntu flavors.

On slow internet connections disabling apt-xapian-index prevents automatic package downloading which will take all your bandwith (I have 256 kb/s mobile sometimes).

sudo chmod a-x /etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common 
sudo chmod a-x /etc/cron.weekly/apt-xapian-index 
sudo chmod a-x /etc/cron.weekly/update-notifier-common 

gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-notifier regular-auto-launch-interval 3650
gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-manager launch-time 1900000000

Seemed to do the trick for me. 3650 means days... 1900000000 tells that the update-manager is last run on year 2030 :)

Update: On Ubuntu 16.04 it seems that you are able to disable automatic updates with following commands and by editing two files:

sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier.desktop.old 
sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-software-service.desktop.old

If extension is other than .desktop these commands won't be run on system start.

Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "0";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "0";

Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "0";

If you have started Update manager even ONCE these files will contain four lines:

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "0";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "0";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "0";

Just change all values to "0"

For Ubuntu 16.04, and possibly other releases as well:

sudo chmod 000 /usr/bin/update-manager
sudo chmod 000 /usr/bin/update-notifier

Then reboot. (Alternatively, it is possible that merely logging out and back in is sufficient.)

You can verify that update-manager is not running by examining the output of:

ps auxwww | grep update

(Aside: Other posters have suggested sudo apt-get purge update-notifer*. However, I prefer not to remove packages that might be tangled up in the various desktop meta-packages.)