How do I turn off Adobe Acrobat Reader Updating? It's driving me nuts:)

October 12, 2020 7:39 PM

Adobe Acrobat Reader is updating itself every day. What the heck. How do I turn it off. I couldn't find a preference or setting to do it.
posted by storybored to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

If this is on a Windows box, my preferred solution generally involves uninstalling Reader altogether and replacing it with something that isn't insanely slow, bloated and irritating.
posted by flabdablet at 8:10 PM on October 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Metabaroque, for some reason I don't have the Updater item on my pref menu?

I did find this though: How to disable auto update on Acrobat Reader DC

Might end up going with Sumatra, as you suggested flabdablet!
posted by storybored at 9:42 PM on October 12, 2020

Reader is not getting updates every day. It’s probably trying to do the same update but can’t. I’d uninstall and reinstall, and if that doesn’t work, then I’d check whether I had enough dish space.
posted by wnissen at 11:06 PM on October 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

The most recent Acrobat update on my work Windows box is constantly notifying me that I have to restart in order for the update to take effect. Is this maybe what's happening?
posted by soundguy99 at 4:55 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Scrap Adobe and try Foxit. https://www.foxitsoftware.com/
posted by james33 at 5:05 AM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Foxit Reader was a pretty good product at version 2; its only real fault was that using it to print a PDF was just grindingly, ridiculously slow. Since then, it's gotten bigger and fiddlier and last time I looked it was still crazy slow to print. Sumatra is much better, plus no ongoing nagging to upgrade to a "pro" version of dubious benefit.
posted by flabdablet at 5:23 AM on October 13, 2020

2nding that it's probably not trying to update every day but trying a specific update and failing. Disabling updates is a poor idea, as they almost always have a significant security fix or two each time. If you want to keep using Reader, try downloading the latest full installer and running it. You may need to remove the currently installed version. Otherwise, as others have suggested, consider switching to an alternative PDF reader.
posted by Candleman at 7:58 AM on October 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

As an alternative, I like PDFXchange viewer, which is not as small as Sumatra, but has a lot of easy commenting features, which I use a lot. If possible, try to find a version from a few years back.
posted by melamakarona at 9:00 AM on October 13, 2020