Thursday, November 21, 2024

Stop the stupid: Disabling Microsoft AutoUpdate on macOS as of Nov 2024

Microsoft AutoUpdate is painfully stupid. It makes my teeth hurt stupid.

No matter what setting I use, even after I tell it to "just update everything, I don't care, go away" it launches 100 times a day (ok, at least once, maybe more than that) and leaves an ugly notification window on top of my desktop. Invariably over something I need to get at.

The click to dismiss it is causing me great emotional pain.

I asked Perplexity how to get rid of it and it did as well as Google -- it gave me answers that ought to work but don't. We all know why that is.

This has worked for me.
  1. Go to '/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0'
  2. Cmd-drag Microsoft AutoUpdate.app to desktop.
  3. Create alias of MAU2.0 folder on desktop.
MAU will stop notifications. Every month or so (yearly?) I drag it into the folder, run update, then drag it out.

Sooner or later Microsoft might make MAU less stupid. My theory is MSFT devs / contractors hate Microsoft Office and want it to die faster.

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