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It Done Broke.

Google Software Update

Google Software Update, which vexes system purists everywhere since it’s installed silently when you install certain Google products, is set by default to autonomously execute on a daily basis.  In Mac OSX, there’s no control panel or preference pane with which to change this annoying behaviour unlike in Windows.

However, I just found this page tucked away which describes how to set the update frequency for OSX (Windows users look here).  You have to get into Terminal and:

$ defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval <frequency>

…where <frequency> is in seconds.  Setting it to 0 (zero) disables it completely.

If you want to manually run an update check, you need to look in either

  • /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/
  • ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/

for a file called ‘CheckForUpdatesNow.command’ and run that.  Convenient, huh?

If I get the time, I might hack together a Pref Pane for this.

Category: Complaining, Desktop

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