Dont forget that if you manually update, Firefox destroys your update settings:
You can still manually update by hitting "About Firefox" in your menu, which will keep your settings as-is.
If you disable update via policy (which is the only way you can do it now that about:config method is removed), then going to "About Firefox" doesnt give you any options regarding updating.
Check your facts.
I could still update from 72.0.0 to 72.0.1 from the About Firefox menu item, and from the about:preferences#general page. I'm running Mac OSX Catalina.
That said, Firefox is definitely doing what they can to make users keep auto updates on. I do think there should be a way to manually update if you've disabled both auto-updates and their update checks, without requiring the user running the installer, forcing you to toggle one of those settings off again.
Also, are there seriously people running FF with updates disabled? I personally see almost no scenario under which I'd ever not want to update.
Not sure how that conflict is resolved
OP in this thread seems to be using that installer with automatic updates, and then disabling it by hand, since when updating via a package manager you don't run into this issue.
It does if you download it directly from Mozilla.
If you disable update via policy (which is the only way you can do it now that about:config method is removed), then going to "About Firefox" doesnt give you any options regarding updating.
Check your facts.
Maybe that's true only for non-ESR versions?