Blog / How to disable Visual Studio Code's update notifications

I haven't been too crazy about how often Visual Studio Code shows popup notifications whenever there's an update available, so I've disabled them. Here's how you can do it:

The simple way

1. Go to File > Preferences > Settings.
2. Find the Application > Update section.
3. Change the value in the Mode dropdown - presumably from default (which means "Enable automatic update checks") - to none (meaning "Disable automatic updates"). VSCode might want to restart itself at this point; let it.

The roundabout way

If you like digging under the hood, you can also disable the popups by going to the View menu, selecting Command Palette and then searching for an option called Open Settings (JSON). This will open the settings.json file with all your user settings. (Note that the pallette also contains Open Workspace Settings (JSON) - ignore that one.)

In the settings file, add the following setting.

{
    "update.mode": "none"
}

(Kudos to Stack Overflow for pointing out the JSON setting name.)