Fix Discord's Terrible Auto Updater On Linux

If Discord's launcher isn't the latest version available it's supposed to automatically update it but on Linux it doesn't have permission to do so, luckily there is a very simple solution

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[BrodieRobertson]

For the record there is another option, download Discord from the website and then install it in a user directory where it will have permission to update itself but as for me I generally prefer having software managed by my package manager

[paleopteryx]

For people unfamiliar with json format: When editing the "settings.json" file, be sure to add a comma after the "}" right before inserting the new line with "SKIP_HOST_UPDATE": true

[DanielNerd]

As someone who manually installed the new version every time this is life changing how did I never heard of this option before

[yjk_ch]

4:42 "Why every distro shipping Discord doesn't include this?"

There might be other reasons, but the main thing is that Discord is Proprietary. They don't have rights to modify the Discord package they ship.

[deadeyea]

I removed Discord with the package manager and installed it manually in ./local/Discord and added it to my PATH variable. Problem solved.

[jennyp]

Thanks for the fix! For me, the second option didn't work until I put the added text in ", as in "SKIP_HOST_UPDATE". The " was not shown in your fix but I saw it on the wiki page that you referenced, and including it made it work for me.

[EnderKill]

So ironic that discord says "It's your lucky day"...

My guess for why package managers wont fix this is that this setting is only set in the user home. The package manager won't know what user is going to actually open discord and is not expected to meddle in the user directory anyway.

One idea would be to turn "/usr/bin/discord" into a wrapper shell script that first ensures this setting is set and then starts the actual discord binary. But this may result in the wrapper creating the file directly, maybe mismatching discord determined location or discord not properly doing a first setup if the file exists. And should it only modify the file when it exists, this can make discord still break on first launch as was as have inconsistent behaviour when only doing it on the 2nd launch effectively. And lastly, this probably adds a dependency like "jq" to discord which package maintainer probably also would like to avoid.

[hermannpaschulke]

I switched to the flatpak version and haven't had this issue since then.

[timmcreynolds]

This has been SUCH a relief to find. This is almost a weekly frustration with Discord, and I never remember which one of the versions I have. My first try at this was using Canary Discord, but after a bit that was failing too. It really was creating some discord in my attitude. Such a frustrating thing to have happen. THANK YOU very much.

[dylon]

discord needs to just be fixed on Linux period. it's really irritating how lazy the Linux port is, it's still on an old electron version, it still doesn't have any wayland support, the flatpak can't access any files by default, this happens, etc etc

[randomexplosion]

Third! In all seriousness thanks Brodie! This problem has been pissing me off so much, I always assumed the problem was just the package maintainers not having tried to use discord yet and update their pkgbuild. You're a legend!

[FengLengshun]

I... honestly never encoutered this issue? I just install Discord from AUR, chaotic-aur, deb-get, or flatpak so maybe it's because those keep the Discord host updated to the point I never noticed that this was an issue.

[JoshuaG]

I knew about this solution because the flathub devs DO implement it.
I used to install discord through my package manager but it really annoyed me when i couldn't use discord because of this. When i installed discord through flatpak i never had this issue (as well as some other issue i was having but that is unrelated) and it wasnt until i checked the flathub repo that i realised that they were doing this to stop it breaking.

[hugojmaia]

Webcord seems like a much better alternative, I installed it and, with 2 minutes poking the settings, it's indistinguishable from regular discord apart from the window title.

[Henk]

Yup, this is why I use the flatpak version because i don't want to wait a few days for it to be in the manjaro repo's.

[superluis]

Bro, thanks. My days of being forced to use Discord only in my phone while waiting for that stupid update to make its way through the package manager are over. Thanks, you're a real one.

[zeocamo]

i always watch for the algo, there is not much you talk about i don't know, but when you do say something new, i love it...

[zeocamo]

4:35 for them who don't know JSON, you need the comma on the line above, or it will not work.

[AdamKirbyMusic]

Thank god for this video, I'm trying to daily drive Linux for a while and this issue is profoundly annoying.

[valeth]

Just checked the config files for my Flatpak install of Discord, and there the setting to skip the host update seems to be set to true by default

Would explain why I never got a prompt for an update ever since I switched to using the Flatpak version.




Nice Nyanners hoodie btw :)