Stopping autoupdate pop-ups

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Hi, I’m trying to figure out how to stop auto-updates popping up, can you please help?

There are a few applications that frequently give me pop-ups about auto-updates that prompt me to enter my administrator user name and password. I don’t like these auto-updates popup prompts because they interrupt my work and force me to do a repetitive task of typing in my credentials to make them go away. I get these pop-ups often for a few different applications. Brave browser is one example that prompts me to approve an autoupdate at least a few times a week for as long as I’ve been using it.

For the past few days, Opera Browser has been prompting me to do an auto-update several times a day. Yesterday I think it prompted me to do a second auto-update immediately after approving an auto-update. If I choose cancel, then the pop-up closes and then a new pop-up comes up a few moments later and prompts me to do the same thing, which basically requires me to deal with it and enter my password and username (unless I want to keep getting more pop-ups or just delete the app).

I don’t understand why it prompts me to enter my username password at all. Other apps and browsers like Chrome or safari never prompt me to enter a password to do an auto-update. The auto-update also does not provide any information for me to review or make a decision about so I don’t understand why it needs my input.

Why do certain apps keep popping up auto-updates that prompt me to enter my credentials? How can I make them stop so it will just update automatically without requiring my input and only give me a pop-up if there’s something that I should pay attention to?

Thanks!

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Most apps have a way to tell them not to check for updates, but the process will be different for most apps.

Browsers such as Google Chrome and Opera are more difficult, because they think they are ‘helping’ by updating themselves, and it’s hard to convince them otherwise.

According to this post from 2018 you can tell Opera not to update itself with this command:

defaults write com.operasoftware.Opera OPDisableAutoUpdate

That needs to be entered in Terminal.app when Opera is not running. It might be a good idea to reboot immediately afterwards, just to be safe. (The original post goes to much greater lengths, which I don’t think are necessary. A reboot should suffice.)

Assuming that process has not changed since then, I would try that.

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