Suppressing Silverlight Update Notifications

[gskibum]

Has anyone had any luck with suppressing Silverlight update notifications?

Inside ~/Library/com.microsoft.silverlight.plist the UpdateMode value that can be changed from 1-(on) to 2-(off). I tried to just package up a com.microsoft.silverlight.plist file with the value set to off, but after pushing out to a test Mac I find that the setting isn't respected by Silverlight Preferences, even though the new value is set in the target's plist file.

Even if I just change the value directly on the test Mac Silverlight Preferences.app won't respect the change.

Any help would be awesome. I've got a few delicate-flower type users that don't want to see the notifications. :-)

[hkabik · Accepted solution]

If you apply a:

killall cfprefsd

Does it respect the plist change?

[gskibum]

Winner! That does the trick.

Thank you.

[GabeShack]

Slightly off topic,

Didn't Microsoft announce that silverlight is going away soon?

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[bpavlov]

They announced that back in 2012.....but its mainstream support ends in 2021:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle?C2=12905
However it won't even work in any version of Chrome after Sept 2015.

At this point all Microsoft is releasing are bug and security fixes for it.

[CasperSally]

it's questionable to me if it works in latest versions of Safari. this MS test site def doesn't load

https://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/Get-Started/Install/Default.aspx

[bpavlov]

It worked fine for me in Safari 7.1.3. Looking at that link it seems even Microsoft's new web browser Edge will not be supporting it either. Not that any of this helps with the discussion, but it really begs the question why any vendor would continue to use Silverlight and hasn't moved to a different technology 3 years after its been killed off....

[CasperSally]

@bpavlov - yea i meant Safari 8.0.5 and 8.0.6. there's plenty of edu sites that still use it. Outlook web access still attempts to use it for attachments as well.

[#9]

Plenty of corporate intranet and extranet type sites still use SL also - I've got staff on specific food clients that still need it installed.

[bpavlov]

I don't doubt a lot of sites use it. (Last major release of Exchange was 2013 so I'm not too surprised it hasn't removed its reliance on it, but it'd be weird if the new version requires it considering MS is releasing a new browser that won't be compatible with it apparently). Anyways, my point is it seems like 3 years would have been a good time to get a lot of sites updated to use an alternative specifically because it's a web plug-in and web browsers are being updated every other week it seems nowadays. I'm not a web developer though so maybe they don't adapt as quickly as I think and maybe it's not even an issue of them not updating their services but rather companies not putting up the money to upgrade to new versions.

[GabeShack]

Netflix still uses it, however they did revamp it for 10.10.4 and the new safari to use html 5.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[gskibum]

Personally I've only needed Silverlight to watch Amazon Prime videos. I just took a look-see on the settings page, and Amazon says Silverlight is recommended, but there is also a checkbox to use Flash Player instead.

[GabeShack]

Wow, two totally amazing options! lol

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[bpavlov]

Well hey at least Flash is being maintained and updated. Eventually (I hope) everything is moved over to HTML5. Even if that means introducing some DRM so that video providers can get on board with it as well. An IT world without needing plug-ins sounds amazing.

[mm2270]

@gshackney Yeah, really. Dumb and dumber! :) I do use Amazon Prime Videos myself, and its a bit annoying that I get pop ups about Silverlight this or that needing an update when they play. I'm not sure if its much better switching to Flash Player though. :/