The Android operating system by default enables automatic updates on your phone as and when available. Apps downloaded from the Google Play Store can be pushed with updates frequently which by the end of the day eats up a lot of your cellular data.
Games and apps in huge sizes can simply drain your daily limit of cellular data. In this particular post, we shall see how to disable such updates on your Android Smartphone.
Please Note: Although this would save a lot of your data, we will not recommend you to disable auto updates.
Disable Auto Updates
Step 1 – Update “Google Play Services”. (Recommended). The app will not be visible inside your app drawer or on the Google Play Store either. Make a Google Search for “Google Play Services” and hit the install button as shown in the screenshot below.
Step 2 – On the next page if you see a green update button, click on it else leave it as it is.
Step 3 – Now open Google Play Store and click on the triple bar menu option on the top left-hand side.
Step 4 – Click on “Settings”.
Step 5 – Inside the settings panel choose “Auto Update apps”.
Step 6 – Choose “Don’t auto-update apps” from the resulting window.
Step 7 – You are done.
Once done with all the above steps your phone shall be disabled for auto app updates from Google Play Store. You can anytime choose to manually update your apps as per your convenience.
Bonus Tip 1 – When you are in Step 6, you can also choose “Over Wi-Fi only. This would only auto-update your apps when your phone is connected to a Wi-Fi service.
Bonus Tip 2 – Inside the settings panel, choose “App download preference”. You can set it to “Over any network” (apps gets updates automatically), Over WI-FI only (apps gets updated automatically when connected to a Wi-Fi service) or Ask me every time (this would ask you to choose the network, whenever an update is available).
We do not recommend you to disable this service. If you are keen then manually check for updates every week. This would ensure your app get hotfixes, bug fixes and UI upgrades over time.
Hello, Mohit.
I just read this blog. It provided me a clear understanding of how to disable auto app updates on android. I feel these tips are very useful for all Android users, and I will keep these tips in my mind for implementation. I appreciate the fact that you have explained all the information in depth and step-by-step.
Thanks for sharing this blog.
Hi, Emma
Thanks, a lot for the valuable inputs. Please keep reading and coming back for more such articles in future.