# Disabling Automatic Updates
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [May 10, 2023, 4:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552 "2023-05-10T16:22:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@PeakProsperity](https://meta.discourse.org/u/PeakProsperity)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 4:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/1 "2023-05-10T16:23:00Z")
Is there a way to disable automatic updates of Discourse? I’d rather review these as they become available and then choose whether or not to install them.
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 5:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/2 "2023-05-10T17:14:01Z")
If you’re self-hosted you can pick and choose when to update. 👍 (though try not to leave it too long so you don’t miss out on security fixes, etc) If you’re on managed hosting there is less choice. 🙂 Depending on who you’re hosted with you could maybe ask them what their options are?
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 5:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/3 "2023-05-10T17:16:20Z")
Yeah, if you are still self-hosted, unless someone has written a script for you, there is no automated update afaia.
Maybe someone in the team rebuilt to add a plugin?
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### Author:  [@PeakProsperity](https://meta.discourse.org/u/PeakProsperity)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 5:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/4 "2023-05-10T17:35:07Z")
I’m self-hosted and was under the impression no automatic updates would happen, but then two things happened:
1. Today our host went to install a plugin and our site went down for nearly 20 minutes because, unbeknownst to him, the Discourse setup was no longer accepting variables with an ‘=’ sign, making us believe something must have changed since we last performed this operation.
2. I noticed the dashboard was saying “Discourse last updated 17 hours ago” even though nobody from our team had initiated any updates. It had recently been saying it was out of date, too. We haven’t installed any updates since the beginning of April.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 5:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/5 "2023-05-10T17:37:44Z")
what does it say on the Dashboard, there? (especially the blue code):
If you click on it it will tell you the date of the commit and when the site was last updated.
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 5:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/6 "2023-05-10T17:41:52Z")
> [@PeakProsperity](#):
>
> host went to install a plugin and our site went down for nearly 20 minutes
Because installing a plugin requires rebuilding and then will happend updating too. AFAIK you can’t avoid that.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2023, 5:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/7 "2023-05-10T17:43:15Z")
Yep as per my comment above: you can’t install a plugin without a rebuild.
One of the main reasons for that is that plugins sometimes require a database migration.
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### Author:  [@PeakProsperity](https://meta.discourse.org/u/PeakProsperity)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2023, 10:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/8 "2023-05-15T10:57:59Z")
> [@merefield](#):
>
> what does it say on the Dashboard, there?
We have not purposefully run any updates since end of March / beginning of April.
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2023, 11:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/9 "2023-05-15T11:24:03Z")
If you rebuilt to install a plugin the site would have been updated through that process.
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### Author:  [@PeakProsperity](https://meta.discourse.org/u/PeakProsperity)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2023, 11:36am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/10 "2023-05-15T11:36:21Z")
Ah that would explain it! Thanks.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2023, 12:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-automatic-updates/264552/11 "2023-07-03T12:42:46Z")
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