How to prevent self update of HU

[makemyday]

Hello, I hope someone can help me here.

Today I saw that an update of PatchMyPC Home Updater was installed on my 4 PCs on 26.03.25 at 7:00 p.m. (the latest version 5.1.1 on each).
PatchMyPC wasn't even started yesterday, so the installation must have been running quietly in the background. (Also, the program was installed in the default directory, but I actually used a different installation path)

How can I prevent PatchMyPC from running in the background and updating silently in the background?

I definitely want to update PatchMyPC manually when I see a new version is available.
 
Where is this controlled and what can I do about it?

[Justin Chalfant (Patch My PC)]

Hey, thanks for reaching out.

Patch My PC Home Updater installs updates to itself automatically through a Windows Scheduled Task. That's why you saw it update quietly in the background even if the app wasn't open at the time.

We don't recommend turning off the self-update since it helps keep the updater secure and working properly, but if you really want to disable it, you can delete or disable the scheduled task called Patch My PC Update using the Windows Task Scheduler.

Hope that helps! Let us know if you have any other questions.

[topbanana]

Can you add an option for this in the Settings?

I had no idea that PMPC was creating scheduled tasks to update itself, and it's something that is NOT common without notification of such!  There wasn't an option for this during installation.

We should be told about this feature, with the option to turn it off.  Or more properly, to opt-in to.

PatchMyPC should offer the update when we start it.  This is the expected behaviour.


Software quietly downloading stuff in the background, without informing the user about, is not good.

[makemyday]

ok, thats's a very unusual way to do, but good to know, I never would have to know where to look for it

[Justin Chalfant (Patch My PC)]

Can you add an option for this in the Settings?

I had no idea that PMPC was creating scheduled tasks to update itself, and it's something that is NOT common without notification of such!  There wasn't an option for this during installation.

We should be told about this feature, with the option to turn it off.  Or more properly, to opt-in to.

PatchMyPC should offer the update when we start it.  This is the expected behaviour.


Software quietly downloading stuff in the background, without informing the user about, is not good.

Thanks for the feedback. The scheduled task you're seeing is part of how Patch My PC works by design. The core purpose of the product is to automatically keep apps up to date in the background without user involvement.

If you're looking for something that offers manual control and only runs when launched, this product probably isn't the right fit. That's totally okay. It's not going to be ideal for every use case.

[topbanana]

But it should inform the user that this is what it will do.

And as your other user fed back to you, this must also be an optional behaviour, such that us users can personally do the updates to our apps, and the PMPC app itself, when we want it to, when we choose to launch PMPC.

We almost certainly will not want it to start updating things, itself, if we're connected to mobile tethering, where every GB costs us money.  Especially in some regions.
And, as is widespread, not every version released is good, solid, without bugs, so we must have the option of not installing a particular build, skipping it, etc.  A feature that is almost certainly core to your professional products, yes?

Up until now, with v4, WE, the users controlled everything.  And PMPC would only self-update when we started it.
This behaviour is 'normal', typical, expected, and should be an option, without doubt.  And probably the default option.  Background running, updating, self-updating, should be opt-in.

Please stop telling your users to go away when they ask for features to be restored, or new behaviours to be optional.
It comes across badly.

You created an amazing tool.
Your users want it to remain being the amazing tool it was.