Disabling automatic updates in Adobe Flash Player

Date Published : 05 Feb 2011

Flash player automatic updates is one of the three most annoying notifications on the system tray for me(others being java and adobe reader). The update notification comes up in the sys tray whenever Adobe releases any minor or major version. Minor updates are released almost everyday for any major software. I do not want to update everytime Adobe releases a new minor version and load my system unless necessary. I wanted to get rid of these automatic updates and the annoying sys tray notification. Since you can not After fiddling with things here and there, I finally found the procedure. If you are like me and want to disable flash player automatic updates, here is the procedure.

• Open any flash content, or website with flash content and right click on the flash content. Select "Global Settings" from the options. Refer Picture 1. Alternatively you can go here directly.
• You will have several panels listed on the left. Select "Global Notifications Settings panel". Refer Picture 2.
• Uncheck the box next to "Notify me when an update to Adobe Flash Player is available". Refer Picture 3 and 4. This will disable automatic updates. Alternatively, instead of completely disabling, you can increase the update check interval if you want. The intervals available are 7 days, 14 days, 30 days and 60 days. By default the frequency is 7 days.
• There is no "Save" button. The settings are automatically saved. But just to be sure our settings are saved, click on any other settings panel on the left and come back to this panel to verify.
• You are done.

Note: There are totally 8 different flash setting penels listed on the left. Check each of them and customize your flash player as per your requirements.

Click here to see the steps for disabling automatic updates in Adobe Reader and Java Runtime.