[Tip] Customize and Control CCleaner Automatic Updates Settings

Many people use popular CCleaner program to clean temporary files and registry in their computers to make their system faster. Recently many CCleaner users noticed that CCleaner program was automatically updated to the latest version without any notification or permission in their computer system even if they disabled the automatic update feature in CCleaner settings.

Today in this tutorial, we’ll tell you how to customize and control CCleaner update settings and how to disable this automatic update behavior in CCleaner.

If you are using CCleaner in your computer, you might be aware of the fact that the new versions of CCleaner come with a new “CCleaner Emergency Updater” tool which is also known by different names given by users such as critical update, forced update or silent background update.

What is CCleaner Emergency Updater (CCUpdate.exe)?

The new emergency updater has the ability to automatically update CCleaner version installed in your computer to the latest version without user permission. Even if a user has disabled automatic update option in CCleaner settings, it can forcefully upgrade CCleaner to newer version without user’s knowledge.

This emergency updater is actually a standalone executable CCUpdate.exe present in CCleaner program files folder (C:\Program Files\CCleaner). You might have seen CCUpdate.exe process in Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc). This EXE is executed automatically at regular intervals using a scheduled task to check for new versions and if a new update is available, it installs it immediately. When you install or upgrade CCleaner newer version, it automatically creates a new task with the name “CCleaner Update” in Task Scheduler (taskschd.msc) to launch CCUpdate.exe file daily and at system startup so that it can check for new CCleaner versions.

Why Emergency Updater was Added to CCleaner?

Emergency Updater was added to CCleaner so that Piriform (CCleaner maker) and Avast (parent company of Piriform) can fix security, performance and compatibility issues found in older versions of CCleaner. The emergency updater feature allows CCleaner to update itself to new versions, if there are some issues present in older versions. In this way the user and the computer system are automatically protected.

But sometimes people intentionally use older versions of CCleaner due to their personal reasons such as privacy issues, their favorite features removed from newer versions, etc. The automatic update of CCleaner may not please them.

Many CCleaner users complained about this automatic update behavior and finally CCleaner team listened to their requests and released a new version of CCleaner which comes with new options to customize automatic update behavior in CCleaner.

Now CCleaner new versions (5.50 and later) provide more control to users over automatic updating behavior of CCleaner. You can now disable the emergency updater tool in CCleaner, so that it can’t update itself automatically without your permission.

NOTE: CCleaner Portable version doesn’t contain emergency updater tool.

Customize CCleaner Update Settings and Disable Emergency Updater Tool:

If you also want to customize CCleaner update settings or disable emergency updater tool, following steps will help you:

For CCleaner Older Versions:

Older versions of CCleaner do not come with built-in settings to customize automatic update behavior. So you’ll need to manually delete CCUpdate.exe file from CCleaner program files folder (C:\Program Files\CCleaner) and delete “CCleaner Update” task from Task Scheduler (taskschd.msc) to disable emergency updater feature and it’ll never update your older CCleaner version without your permission. If you don’t want to delete CCUpdate.exe file or you are unable to delete the file, you can block CCUpdate.exe file from accessing Internet using Firewall. This way the emergency updater will be unable to find new versions.

For CCleaner 5.50 and later versions:

Newer versions of CCleaner come with built-in settings to control automatic update behavior as mentioned below:

1. Open CCleaner and click on Options tab.

2. Now click on Updates section.

3. In Updates section, you’ll see 2 types of updates:

• Important Updates (highly recommended)
• Product Updates (recommended)

Important Updates are major updates to ensure that CCleaner runs safely and smoothly on your system. In other words, this is the emergency updater feature which can automatically update your older/outdated version of CCleaner to latest version, if CCleaner team pushes the update from its servers. This is done to ensure that any security or compatibility issue has been fixed in all computers running CCleaner program.

Product Updates deliver the latest product improvements and cleaning updates so CCleaner can fully clean your computer. In other words, it means the regular version updates of CCleaner which are released almost every month and come with new features, support for new browsers, newer versions of popular browsers, newer versions of operating systems, etc.

Disable Important Updates i.e. Emergency Updater:

Important Updates i.e. emergency updater is enabled by default and the option to show notifications after successful update is also enabled.

We’ll not advise anyone to disable Important Updates as these updates are required to keep your CCleaner version as well as computer safe and secure but if you really want to use an older version of CCleaner and don’t want CCleaner to automatically update itself in future, you can disable it.

Just uncheck “Apply these updates automatically” option given under “Important Updates“section and it’ll permanently disable the emergency updater tool and will prevent CCleaner from automatically updating itself to newer versions in future.

If you want to keep the emergency updater feature enabled but want to get rid of the notifications about successful update, uncheck “Notify me when an update has taken place” option. Now you’ll never receive any update notification from CCleaner.

Disable Product Updates i.e. New Versions Updates:

Product updates i.e. newer versions updates are disabled for free versions by default. Only Pro version users can use “Apply these updates automatically” option given under Product Updates section.

Free version users are limited to “Perform these updates manually” option. They need to manually check for updates and upgrade to latest version.

However a notification about new version available is shown to free version users. If you want to disable update notifications, you can uncheck “Show me notifications for these updates” option given under Product Updates section. It’ll turn off new update available notifications in CCleaner permanently.

Also Check:

[Tip] Disable Automatic Updates for Software Versions in CCleaner

[CCleaner Tip] Improve Privacy by Disabling Usage Data Collection and Reporting