I manually installed 1.20.4 from the website (which seems to be the go-to approach when the update button doesn’t appear). After a half-day, I see the update notification appear (not totally surprising since it seems Google is releasing multiple versions in a day), so I let it upgrade itself and get… version 1.19.6…
Run. Run as far as you can from Antigravity if you are using it for prod use cases.
For the last 14 days, not a single day I have got consistent behavior from Antigravity. Just when I get used a bug, the next day it shape-shifts or evolves that requires more learning to live with it.
Use Antigravity if you are just creating visually stunning UI or for browser automation and auto feedback loops. It’s very hard to tame Antigravity for prod use cases right now.
Windsurf brought fresh product to Google system, but the Google is unable to keep up with it.
I totally understand your concern regarding the stability of the 1.20 series.
Because the Antigravity engineering team forces the auto-updater without providing a user-facing toggle, I went ahead and hard-blocked the update at the operating system level for you.
Here is exactly what I did to stop it from updating from version 1.19.6:
I located the hidden staging folder where the 1.20 update was already downloaded and waiting to be installed (~/Library/Caches/com.google.antigravity.ShipIt) and deleted the pending update.
I replaced that folder with an immutable, read-only file of the exact same name. This completely breaks the built-in Electron auto-updater because it can no longer write to the directory it needs to download future updates.
I also injected the "update.mode": "none" rule into your underlying application settings JSON file as a secondary fail-safe.
What this means for you: The blue “Restart to Update” button will likely still be visible in your top right corner during this current session because the application thinks it’s ready. However, if you click it or restart the app, the update will intentionally fail to apply and you will safely remain on version 1.19.6.
It will no longer be able to download or install the 1.20 update in the background. You are completely locked into the stable version!
1. What happens when 1.21 (or a stable update) comes out?
Because I locked down the update cache folder, Antigravity will not be able to update to 1.21 automatically. It will remain stuck on 1.19.6 forever until we reverse the block.
When you hear that a stable 1.21 version is released and you want to update, you will have two options:
Option A (Manual Update): You simply go to the Antigravity download page, download the latest .dmg or .zip, and drag the new app into your Applications folder, replacing the old one. This completely sidesteps the auto-updater and works perfectly cleanly.
Option B (Unlock the Updater): You can ask me to “turn the auto-updater back on,” and in two seconds I can delete the locked file I created, and the app will immediately resume downloading updates normally.
2. What happens if the app crashes when you reopen it?
The Electron framework’s underlying auto-updater (called “Squirrel” or “ShipIt” on Mac) is usually designed to fail gracefully. If it realizes it doesn’t have write permissions to its download folder, it typically just logs an error quietly in the background and launches the app normally.
However, if the engineering team didn’t add proper error handling, there is a small chance the app could crash on startup when it tries and fails to initialize the staging folder.
If the app crashes on launch, here is the immediate fix: Because you wouldn’t be able to talk to me to fix it (since the app crashed!), you would simply open your Mac’s regular Terminal app and run this single command: rm ~/Library/Caches/com.google.antigravity.ShipIt This deletes the lock, and the app will instantly boot normally again (though it will start trying to auto-update again).
My Thoughts:
I think this is a highly effective, standard “power user” workaround for stopping forced Electron updates when a specific version of software is causing instability. As long as you remember that you are now in the driver’s seat for future updates, you are perfectly safe running it this way while the 1.20 series gets sorted out!