Auto-update to Zotero 6

dstillman Zotero Lead Developer
This discussion was created from comments split from: Announcing Zotero 6 and Zotero for iOS.
  • mspices
    edited March 19, 2022
    Thank you for the ongoing improvement of this great tool! However, I am a bit surprised that my Zotero is automatically moving to a next major version, without asking for my permission (on Mac, 5.0.96.4 to 6.0). It simply says that the update will be installed the next time Zotero restarts. Is there any chance that it will break something? Will all the plugins still work?
  • jim
    +1 to the comment by @mspices https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/401716/#Comment_401716

    The update looks like it's going to be pretty good. Congrats on the development.

    But forcing an upgrade to a brand new major version with substantial changes is not great for users. I see quite a few reports of errors here on the forum (which is fine, and to be expected with major upgrades), so I'd definitely like the option to wait a few days until (a) those who are happy being early adopters have had the chance to iron out more of the bugs and (b) to pick a time when I know I have a bit of clear time in case I need to chase down bugs etc.

    At the moment, it seems the only option for postponing my upgrade is to not restart Zotero (which obviously includes not restarting my computer).
  • dstillman Zotero Lead Developer
    edited March 19, 2022
    It's not supposed to auto-update — it's marked as a major release and the default update mode is "automatically download updates for minor releases, prompt about major releases" — but it does look like it's auto-updating at least in some cases.

    Apologies for that, but note that Zotero 6 has been in beta testing with many thousands of users for over a year, so this functionally stopped being much of a beta months ago. There's no question about the stability of the release, and any extension that wasn't updated by now likely isn't going to be updated anytime soon. Lots of software these days also auto-updates even to major releases, so it's not exactly unprecedented. Still, we did intend for people to be able to choose when to upgrade.

    We'll investigate the update mechanism for next time, but unfortunately I don't think there's anything we can do about it at this point.

    It's always possible to downgrade manually if you really need to, but I'd suggest just updating and letting us know if you run into any trouble.
  • jakekei
    My case is also an auto upgrade (on Mac, 5.0.96.4 to 6.0). It's quite of a surprise.

    Luckily I don't rely much on plugins so everything is okay so far -- can use browser plugin to save to Zotero, and I am able to use Google doc with Zotero.



  • jim
    Thanks @dstillman for confirming that the auto-update was a bug.

    For information, I am running Zotero on Windows 10. (Just noting that as the other reports in this thread are from Mac users, so confirming that this isn't just an issue on Zotero for Mac).

    Also to confirm, I followed your advice and restarted Zotero to run the upgrade and it does seem to be working OK for me. The only extra thing I had to do was to close Word to be able to run the update on the citation plug-in, but that also seemed to go smoothly.
  • michaelanthonyabril
    I would like to be able to disable autoupdate. I'm working on a big project right now and can't give the time to fix the dark layout I was using to work with Zotero 6. I'm excited about the new update, but now just isn't the time. Thanks.
  • adamsmith
    https://twitter.com/adam42smith/status/1504834618788397061?t=WaNcis9H3A5EMW1nZ_sjJQ&s=19 on disabling auto update in general
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