It's to be expected that running the installer will give you a fresh install of Firefox.
You can still manually update by hitting "About Firefox" in your menu, which will keep your settings as-is.
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.