How to disable automatic update checks?

We would like to update our Audacity installations to the newest version 3.1.3 but we noticed that “Check for updates” is enabled by default. How can we disable this by default for all users? We use silent insall (audacity-win-3.1.3-32bit.exe /VERYSILENT /NORESTART) in our batch scripts.
Audacity - Check for updates.png

In each user’ “audacity.cfg”

[Update]
DefaultUpdatesChecking=0

How to make this default setting without using scripts to scan all audacity.cfg files periodically?

Are you just wanting to set the default value, or do you want to permanently block Audacity’s update checking even if the user tries to enable it?
If it’s the former, you only need to set the value once when Audacity is installed.
If the latter, then use your firewall, or whatever method you use for other apps, or simply deny Internet access to those computers.

The default value is enough.

And set this for 300 computers and every 500 users.

I build an installation packet for version 3.02 which won’t check updates.

Out of interest, why do you want your users to use obsolete versions of Audacity? Isn’t it normally considered good practice to keep your software up to date?

Is it still impossible to disable automatic update checks for all users?

Include a default “audacity.cfg” in your installer script.

I cannot find the the default.cfg. There’s no cfg files in Audacity install folder.

That’s the factory default - no preferences set.

  • If Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\audacity\audacity.cfg exists when Audacity is launched, then Audacity will use it.
  • If Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\audacity\audacity.cfg does not exist when Audacity is launched, then Audacity creates a new (initially empty) “audacity.cfg” file, and then populates it with default settings.
  • When the user changes a Preference setting, the audacity.cfg file is updated.

So by creating a Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\audacity\audacity.cfg file with your installation script, you can set whatever default Preferences that you want.

The folder *c:\Users<username>* does not exist if the user has not logged in. We have over 1600 users so we can’t create home folders beforehand.

Really :astonished:
I’m a Linux guy, and on Linux it’s a standard option to create a home folder when adding a new user. If that’s not possible on Windows then I’d be shocked. Try asking your SysAdmin how to do it.

So I don’t know if this helps, but for the current user, and depending on the program you are using, %appdata%\audacity is equivalent to Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\audacity.

It’s not about using “obsolete versions”. It’s about users not have administrative rights or having software restrictions in place to lower the risk of malware, or just installing stuff they shouldn’t. Being able to set this during installation is by far the better option, vs having to manage a config file with settings and pushing that out to hundreds of machines.

Also as for “home folders”, they are created, but the C:\Users%username% is not created on a workstation until that user logs in. So if it’s installed on a workstation at 1pm, but a user doesn’t login until 2pm, how does that config get set?

Not to mention, making changes to user configurations later is harder to accomplish because you need to push this file to 1600 users. There simply needs to be a better way to manage certain settings, like updates.