Automatic or manual updates

[BruceAWittmeier]

I want to talk to the complaint department.

Tools/Addons - clicking the gear drop down box - you are presented with options of which one is:

- Reset all addons to update manually -

This is fine. But why then on every addon (Automatic updates - Check for Updates) there are 3 different options:
Default - On - Off

Now we have 4 choices - Default - On - Off - Manually

There is no indication of what default is so why use it? On or Off/True or False/Yes or NO will work fine without the confusion.

If Default helps someone add it to the default selection for clarification but it shouldn't be a separate choice.

[lithopsian]

There are only really two states for each addon: update automatically or update manually (aka on and off). In addition there is a global setting, which means that addons can be in the default state, whatever that might be, even if it changes, without having to change every addon individually. Default is a separate choice because it is different to on and off. So those are the three states you see for each addon. The "fourth state" is just to update manually (= off), and there is a command to set every addon to off all in one go, in case some of your addons are updating automatically and you don't like it.

[BruceAWittmeier]

I'm not trying to be difficult but the first question was what is default for addons? Every addon has the 3 option/radio buttons. This just isn't clear unless default implies the setting for Global.

It seems the global setting seems tied to everything (browser, addons, plugins, etc) but what happens if you set global to On and an addon to never/manual?

[lithopsian]

Default means the addon uses the global setting for automatically updating addons, as set from the self-same tools menu. Whatever the default might be, if an individual addon has a setting other than default then that other setting will be used for that addon.

I don't believe that the "global" default setting for updating addons applies to anything other than addons and plugins. The update setting for the browser itself is elsewhere, on the advanced tab of the options/preferences page.

[BruceAWittmeier]

So the update - about:preferences#advanced - applies only to the browser, not add-ons.


about:addons#extensions

Selecting the gear/drop-down list there are two options regarding updates for addons:

- Update add-ons automatically
- Reset all add-ons to update manually

No matter what the status may have been for each individual add-on, when update manually is selected each add-on is changed to the "Default" radio button in the "...more" of each add-on.

Where is the global setting for updating addons or is that it? Can I globally apply never check for add-on updates?

Sorry for all my questions but I really need to understand this.

[lithopsian]

I could have sworn there was another reply in this thread. Gone now if it ever existed.

There are *three* options regarding updates for addons, but only two are ever visible at one time depending on the state of the first checkbox:
- Update add-ons automatically
- Reset all add-ons to update manually
- Reset all add-ons to update automatically

Changing the value of the first of these does *nothing* to the settings for each individual addon. If an addon is set on or off then it stays that way. If it is set to default, then it remains set to default and the value of the global "Update add-ons automatically" setting is used for that addon. That is the global setting for all addons, but it doesn't override addons that are set to something other than default. So that is the setting to use to never check for addon updates. Additionally, you can use the "Reset all add-ons to update manually" command to reset any addons that have been individually set to update automatically instead of default. Note that there is no "reset all to default" command which might be useful, but I guess if you start fiddling about then you have to take responsibility for all time.

The browser update setting on the advanced tab does not appear to interact in any way with the addon update settings, at least no way I've found.

[BruceAWittmeier]

I see now.

The option "Update addons automatically" is selectable and will remain checked until you uncheck it. The status changes the last item in the list. I never selected "Update addons automatically" as I didn't want to kick off a bunch of updates not knowing if this would trigger updates to all or not.

With "Update addons automatically" un-selected the option "Reset all addons to update manually" is available. Selecting this resets the addons (...more) to "Default".

With "Update addons automatically" selected the option "Reset all addons to update automatically" is available.

Thank you for taking the time to explain this.