In either case, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s possible to stop Android apps from automatically updating themselves without your permission. Unfortunately, Google did a good job hiding away the option to turn off automatic updates. Let’s take a look at where these options are and how to reach them.
Stopping All Apps from Updating
If you want to stop all apps from automatically updating themselves, follow these steps. First, go to the Google Play store. Beside the search bar on the left you’ll see an icon which consists of three lines, one on top of the other. Touch this, and then touch the “Settings” option.
You’ll have a selection of options. Press the one that says “Auto-Update Apps” – it should be right at the top of the Settings options.
Once done, you’re presented with a selection of different options for auto-updating apps. You can either have auto-updates run as normal, disable them, or have apps auto-update only when you’re on WiFi. The latter will be especially useful for people with a fragile phone data plan but a wholesome (if not infinite) data cap on their home Internet.
Now that you’ve disabled automatic updates for all apps, how do they update? When an app wants to download an update, it now has to ask you first. You’ll know when an app wants to update when a Google Play icon appears in your notification bar. Tap this notification to see what apps want updating, and manually approve each one (or all at once).
Stopping One App from Updating
That’s all well and good, but what if you want to stop only one app from auto-downloading? Perhaps you’re fine with certain important and critical apps updating themselves when they need to, but you’re not so keen on games or entertainment apps updating while you’re trying to do business-crucial activities. Thankfully, you can disable auto-updates for individual apps and allow other apps to auto-update when they want to. To turn off a single app from auto-updating, first go to the Google Play store. Press the three bars at the top left, then select “My Apps & Games.”
You’ll be taken to a list of your apps. Find the app that you want to stop the auto-updates for. In this example we’ll be stopping Google Chrome from automatically updating itself, so we tap that app on the list.
This will bring you to the apps’ store page. When here, press the three dots at the top right of the app’s page and untick the box that says “Auto-Update.”
Now this specific app won’t automatically download updates, but every other app will download as you told it to.
