How to disable the Limesurvey “ComfortUpdate” updating feature

Especially after a new version was released, there can be lots of new bug fix releases within a short time for a new Limesurvey version. These “New release available” messages always pop up after having logged in at the admin interface and it can get a little annoying to get rid of them by clicking [x] at the pop-up message all the time.

If you want to globally turn off the ComfortUpdate feature so there are no more update checks and messages popping up, you can edit the config.php file at /limesurvey/application/config. Don’t forget to create a backup first!

At the end of the file you should find the following settings:

Limesurvey config file

 

To disable the update feature we have to set the “updatable” setting to false. To do so, add a comma after the ‘debugsql’=>0 setting and add another line:

'updatable' => false

The full last block of the config.php file should then look like this:

// Use the following config variable to set modified optional settings copied from config-defaults.php
 'config'=>array(
 // debug: Set this to 1 if you are looking for errors. If you still get no errors after enabling this
 // then please check your error-logs - either in your hosting provider admin panel or in some /logs directory
 // on your webspace.
 // LimeSurvey developers: Set this to 2 to additionally display STRICT PHP error messages and get full access to standard templates
 'debug'=>0,
 'debugsql'=>0, // Set this to 1 to enanble sql logging, only active when debug = 2
 'updatable' => false
 )

You can check if the updater was disabled by:

  • Limesurvey 2.50 and later: Calling the ComfortUpdate feature from the Configuration menu.
  • Limesurvey < 2.50: Going to Global Settings -> ComfortUpdate where you should get the following message: “…comfortUpdate is disabled in your LimeSurvey configuration.”