Oracle Virtual Box is an open-source virtualization software for a number of platforms. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux hosts. We can run many guest operating systems in Virtual Box including Windows (XP to 11), MS-DOS, FreeDOS, Linux, FreeBSD, and more.
This week Oracle issued a notification to all the users requesting not to download and use the latest version (Virtual Box 7.16). This is because this version crashes whenever the users the bridged networking for the guest operating systems. Obviously, there are going to fix this bug as soon as possible. In the interim, you can either ignore the update notification (that shows the new version to be 7.16), or you can disable the regular update checks temporarily.
Here is how you can disable the regular checking of the updates for Oracle Virtual Box:
- Launch Virtual Box and select File then Preferences from its menubar. Alternatively, you can also use the hotkey Ctrl+G. In both cases, Virtual Box preferences window will be opened.
- In the preferences window, select the Update section from the left side list of sections.
- Uncheck the checkbox labeled Check for Updates.
- Click OK to save the settings.
After these changes Virtual Box is not going to check for the updates. It is not going to show any new version update notifications. This is useful if you have to run a particular guest OS on a selected version of Virtual Box. You can re-enable the updates later when you want to be notified of the new versions of Virtual Box.
Instead of completely disabling this update check feature, you can also change the frequency of update check. For example, you can set it to a month which makes Virtual Box check for updates once in a month. By default, Virtual Box checks for the new updated versions every single day. We can set it to anywhere from 1 day to 30 days.