Actually, you cannot disable updates from the App store, but there is a solution for anyone who has updated IOS to version 17.2.1. I learned this from the Apple tech support. If you select the "App Store" under the settings menu, there is a new tab called "App Updates" to uncheck. It disables automatic install of new app updates. The downside is that most apps are updating just about every day, so you'll get a notification that they need updating and you have o go through all of them to see if you want to update or not.