How do I disable VS Code of updating itself?

Have you tried updating JSON User settings to "update.mode": "none"

Navigation steps:

File > Preferences > Settings

References:

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ

Following block of text is from the FAQ VS Code

How do I opt out of VS Code auto-updates?

By default, VS Code is set up to auto-update for macOS and Windows users when we release new updates. If you do not want to get automatic updates, you can set the update.channel setting from default to none.

To modify the update channel, go to File > Preferences > Settings and add the update.channel setting with the value "none".

"update.mode": "none"

I had this problem for a long time and solved as in the steps in the screenshot. I set it to manual and it works:

enter image description here

The none option works so no clear difference between the two options.