# Chrome updated without asking me **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 7, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949 "2018-09-07T16:20:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/1 "2018-09-07T16:20:29Z")
Not a big deal but I thought the standard procedure was to ask if you agreed to the update for Windows applications? My laptop is 2010 vintage with Windows 7 if that matters. Maybe they make Chrome updates a lot but this one is a bigger change so I noticed it right away. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/2 "2018-09-07T17:02:53Z")
Chrome always updates in the background without asking permission. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/3 "2018-09-07T17:54:58Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Chrome always updates in the background without asking permission. Yes. OP perhaps you are thinking of other browsers like Firefox which has a setting where you can choose between 1. Automatic updates 2. Firefox asks 3. Never check for updates. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/4 "2018-09-07T18:44:42Z")
Yes, and when it did the eight most visited sites area, on the bottom under the search- went away. That was very handy. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/5 "2018-09-07T21:25:25Z")
Note that people are rolling back from the latest Chrome 69 to Chrome 68 due to [blurry fonts](https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/06/1839242/google-investigating-issue-with-blurry-fonts-on-new-chrome-69). There has to be a better way to ensure that naive users update in a decent amount of time but not force everyone to update to a potentially buggy new version. ---
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/6 "2018-09-07T21:37:33Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Not a big deal but I thought the standard procedure was to ask if you agreed to the update for Windows applications? My laptop is 2010 vintage with Windows 7 if that matters. Maybe they make Chrome updates a lot but this one is a bigger change so I noticed it right away. Chrome’s always done this. You’re probably noticing version 69 specifically because the UI has changed quite a bit. (The tab bar looks plain weird now. I’m getting used to it…) The only way to not have it update automatically is to be part of an Active Directory domain, which still have the option to disable Chrome auto-updates. (Although I imagine eventually Google will start ignoring that option.) ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/7 "2018-09-07T21:58:17Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Yes, and when it did the eight most visited sites area, on the bottom under the search- went away. That was very handy. Enter chrome://flags/ in the search bar and go Type in “new tab page” in the search flags box You need to change two options: “Enable using the Google local NTP” should be set to **Enabled** ; and “New Tab Page Material Design UI” should be set to **Disabled** Restart browser, and the old behaviour is back God knows why Google changed this handy feature though :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/8 "2018-09-07T22:17:08Z")
If you revert, the tabs change back to trapezoids and the blurry fonts go away. Also, the doubling of thin lines is cancelled. Other behind-the-scenes changes are retained, but you can’t see those. I have noticed a change in how the click and drag operation works in one specialized program, but only that one (not a public program, so don’t worry about it). ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/9 "2018-09-07T22:19:03Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > Enter chrome://flags/ in the search bar and go > > Type in “new tab page” in the search flags box > > You need to change two options: > > “Enable using the Google local NTP” should be set to **Enabled** ; and > > “New Tab Page Material Design UI” should be set to **Disabled** > > Restart browser, and the old behaviour is back > > God knows why Google changed this handy feature though :rolleyes: Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/10 "2018-09-07T22:28:22Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > If you revert, the tabs change back to trapezoids and the blurry fonts go away. Also, the doubling of thin lines is cancelled. Other behind-the-scenes changes are retained, but you can’t see those. > > I have noticed a change in how the click and drag operation works in one specialized program, but only that one (not a public program, so don’t worry about it). This does seem to be an unusually buggy release of Chrome. They also added a feature that removes “www.” and “m.” from URLs (because I guess they think this makes websites easier to use?), but they neglected to only look at the first part of the domain. So if you have a domain name like: [www.username.www.website.com](http://www.username.www.website.com) It’d show up as [username.website.com](http://username.website.com). (Instead of removing only the \*first \*www, it removes both of them.) There’s a lot of disturbing phishing implications for this. (If you \*owned \*[www.com](http://www.com) you could pretend to be literally any other domain you wanted! [yourbank.www.com](http://yourbank.www.com) would display as [yourbank.com](http://yourbank.com).) It seems nobody thought it through very well before shipping it. (Ignore the auto-linking above, I don’t know how to tell the forum to stop doing that.) ---
**Author:** ![PoppaSan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/poppasan/32/189_2.png) [@PoppaSan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoppaSan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2018, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/11 "2018-09-08T00:41:17Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Not a big deal but I thought the standard procedure was to ask if you agreed to the update for Windows applications? My laptop is 2010 vintage with Windows 7 if that matters. Maybe they make Chrome updates a lot but this one is a bigger change so I noticed it right away. Thanks a lot! My Chrome didn’t update until I went to check which version I had. THAT is when it downloaded and installed the update. Not before then. **I BLAME YOU!!!** ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2018, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/12 "2018-09-08T01:49:30Z")
Same here. Thankfully, I didn’t get blurry fonts. The new tabs are kinda annoying though. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2018, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/13 "2018-09-15T09:29:53Z")
> [@Blakeyrat](#): > > (Ignore the auto-linking above, I don’t know how to tell the forum to stop doing that.) If you are “replying to thread,” below the text box are Additional Options. The first one is “Automatically parse links in text.” Uncheck that. At least that’s how my display/edit works. Other displays might be different. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2018, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chrome-updated-without-asking-me/820949/14 "2018-09-15T13:12:08Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > If you are “replying to thread,” below the text box are Additional Options. The first one is “Automatically parse links in text.” Uncheck that. > > At least that’s how my display/edit works. Other displays might be different. Another useful one to know is the “noparse” tag, which even works in quick reply (where there is no “automatically parse links in text” option) and works as a general escape character, so that everything written between it is, well, not parsed by vB. So type: [noparse][noparse][www.examplewebsite.com](http://www.examplewebsite.com)[/noparse][/noparse] to get: [noparse][www.examplewebsite.com](http://www.examplewebsite.com)[/noparse] But it’s also useful when answering questions about vB tagging, so you can do stuff like type: [noparse] \*\* \* [size=4] 🙂 :smack: ```auto [quote] [/noparse], etc., without triggering type formatting, smileys, text boxes, etc. (Although on the full reply page, there is also a checkbox option at least for disabling smileys.) ```