It's annoying. Open Chrome and click the address bar to type an address, and suddenly the cursor disappears and Chrome's annoying update notification is displayed and given focus.
Sure, updates are necessary. But not when I'm busy with something. This update notification is exactly as annoying as the silly forced wait time enforced by Microsoft Windows updates. Interaction designers at Microsoft and Google really need to educate themselves on improving user experience. There are better ways to implement security updates.
Anyway, on Ubuntu, the way to get rid of it is by setting a faraway simulated update date:
sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop
Search for the lines starting with "Exec=" and add a --simulate-outdated-no-au='Tue, 31 Dec 2099 23:59:59 GMT' flag.
So a line that looked like this:
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U
Would become this:
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --simulate-outdated-no-au='Tue, 31 Dec 2099 23:59:59 GMT' %U
That's it. Now you can start Chrome without the annoying update notification.
If you want it to start in incognito mode each time or in fullscreen mode each time, you could also add these flags: --start-fullscreen --incognito.
In Windows, as this answer states, simply use RegEdit to open the key [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ChromeHTML\shell\open\command] and add this argument:
--simulate-outdated-no-au=\"01 Jan 2199\"
If you are an Engineer, remember this. Design software to be usable. Instead of making users go through this complex process of disabling the update notification, provide a checkbox to set a reminder date and time or to switch off those notifications.
