How to disable Google Chrome extension autoupdate

Question

How do I disable Google Chrome extension autoupdate?

Answer 1

this is a complementary answer to the accepted one https://stackoverflow.com/a/27657703/1422630 , allowing disable all at once on chromium

this is also only for linux (may be run on windows thru cygwin tho, not tested..)

this script will

• backup the prefs file,
• modify it,
• if didnt succeed will output "FAILED"
• show the differences using meld if installed

#!/bin/bash

set -ue

strPref="$HOME/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences"
cat "$strPref" |egrep "\"update_url[^,]*," -o |sort -u
read -p "existing unique urls above..." -n 1

strBkp="${strPref}.`date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S"`.bkp"
if cp -v "$strPref" "$strBkp";then
  strUpdUrl="clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx" #change this if needed  #TODO should match any URL...
  sed -i -r "s@(update_url\":\"https{,1}://)(${strUpdUrl})@\1127.0.0.1@g" "$strPref"
  if grep "$strUpdUrl" "$strPref";then echo FAILED >&2;exit 1;fi

  cmdDiff=colordiff
  if which meld;then cmdDiff=meld;fi
  #$cmdDiff <(cat "$strPref" |egrep "\"update_url[^,]*," -o) <(cat "$strBkp" |egrep "\"update_url[^,]*," -o)
  $cmdDiff <(cat "$strPref" |sed -r 's@","@",\n"@g') <(cat "$strBkp" |sed -r 's@","@",\n"@g')
fi

tested on chromium: Version 63.0.3239.84 (Official Build) Built on Ubuntu , running on Ubuntu 16.04 (64-bit)

obs.: that script also works for google-chrome, just change the preferences file path