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I'd love to be able to stop Chrome from auto-updating/installing as well.

This one is easy. Find its updater service plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgents, delete it, and create a directory with the same name so it won't be able to overwrite it.

Those are often files not directories. In that case I zero out the file (no bytes) then change ownership to root and -w it. Ridiculous you have to jump through these hoops to manage your own machine and Apple doesn’t bother to expose this anywhere.

Agree. I don't know where the loophole is—allowing an app to run a launch agent? Allowing it to replace its binary?

Clearly though, an irresponsible or rogue app could later install a "warez version" of itself after the user had installed the harmless one. And MacOS appears not to put up any gaurdrails to prevent that.

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