[DOCS] DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER env documentation refers to undocumented or non-existent setting

Status Closed — not planned

Maintainer reply ✓ Yes — ant-kurt

Activity 7 comments · opened Oct 22, 2025 · closed Feb 5, 2026

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (ant-kurt, collaborator) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

Documentation Type

Incorrect/outdated documentation

Documentation Location

https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/settings#available-settings

Section/Topic

Environment variables / Available settings

Current Documentation

Variable | Purpose
-- | --
DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER | Set to 1 to disable automatic updates. This takes precedence over the autoUpdates configuration setting.

and

Key | Description | Example
-- | -- | --
apiKeyHelper | Custom script, to be executed in /bin/sh, to generate an auth value. This value will be sent as X-Api-Key and Authorization: Bearer headers for model requests | /bin/generate_temp_api_key.sh
cleanupPeriodDays | How long to locally retain chat transcripts based on last activity date (default: 30 days) | 20
env | Environment variables that will be applied to every session | {"FOO": "bar"}
includeCoAuthoredBy | Whether to include the co-authored-by Claude byline in git commits and pull requests (default: true) | false
permissions | See table below for structure of permissions. |
hooks | Configure custom commands to run before or after tool executions. See hooks documentation | {"PreToolUse": {"Bash": "echo 'Running command...'"}}
disableAllHooks | Disable all hooks | true
model | Override the default model to use for Claude Code | "claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929"
statusLine | Configure a custom status line to display context. See statusLine documentation | {"type": "command", "command": "~/.claude/statusline.sh"}
outputStyle | Configure an output style to adjust the system prompt. See output styles documentation | "Explanatory"
forceLoginMethod | Use claudeai to restrict login to Claude.ai accounts, console to restrict login to Claude Console (API usage billing) accounts | claudeai
forceLoginOrgUUID | Specify the UUID of an organization to automatically select it during login, bypassing the organization selection step. Requires forceLoginMethod to be set | "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
enableAllProjectMcpServers | Automatically approve all MCP servers defined in project .mcp.json files | true
enabledMcpjsonServers | List of specific MCP servers from .mcp.json files to approve | ["memory", "github"]
disabledMcpjsonServers | List of specific MCP servers from .mcp.json files to reject | ["filesystem"]
useEnterpriseMcpConfigOnly | When set in managed-settings.json, restricts MCP servers to only those defined in managed-mcp.json. See Enterprise MCP configuration | true
allowedMcpServers | When set in managed-settings.json, allowlist of MCP servers users can configure. Undefined = no restrictions, empty array = lockdown. Applies to all scopes. Denylist takes precedence. See Enterprise MCP configuration | [{ "serverName": "github" }]
deniedMcpServers | When set in managed-settings.json, denylist of MCP servers that are explicitly blocked. Applies to all scopes including enterprise servers. Denylist takes precedence over allowlist. See Enterprise MCP configuration | [{ "serverName": "filesystem" }]
awsAuthRefresh | Custom script that modifies the .aws directory (see advanced credential configuration) | aws sso login --profile myprofile
awsCredentialExport | Custom script that outputs JSON with AWS credentials (see advanced credential configuration) | /bin/generate_aws_grant.sh

What's Wrong or Missing?

https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/settings#available-settings does not indicate any setting for disabling autoupdates, even though https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/settings#environment-variables says something about autoUpdates

Suggested Improvement

Document autoUpdates or remove the reference from env vars

Impact

Medium - Makes feature difficult to understand

Additional Context

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

7 Comments

madorb · 10 months ago

Also - it's a _really_ poor practice require env vars with top level namespacing.

DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER should really be something like CLAUDE_DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER

github-actions[bot] · 9 months ago

This issue has been inactive for 30 days. If the issue is still occurring, please comment to let us know. Otherwise, this issue will be automatically closed in 30 days for housekeeping purposes.

breun · 9 months ago

This issue still exists.

github-actions[bot] · 8 months ago

This issue has been automatically closed due to 60 days of inactivity. If you're still experiencing this issue, please open a new issue with updated information.

marcindulak · 8 months ago

This issue was closed incorrectly despite recent human comments. This behavior of the bot is reported at https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/16497. Please upvote that issue, so maybe it gets noticed.

ant-kurt collaborator · 8 months ago

You can disable autoupdates with this env var

// settings.json
{
  "env": {
    "DISABLE_AUTOUPDATER": "1"
  }
}

There is a (deprecated) .claude.json field autoUpdates, which is no longer recommended for use.

github-actions[bot] · 7 months ago

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.