diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index 6a29960b9d7..ba1362f8e66 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -1705,7 +1705,6 @@ dependencies = [
  "libc",
  "log",
  "maplit",
- "memchr",
  "miette",
  "mukti-metadata",
  "nextest-filtering",
diff --git a/nextest-runner/Cargo.toml b/nextest-runner/Cargo.toml
index 7185a6445b6..85999a8e62e 100644
--- a/nextest-runner/Cargo.toml
+++ b/nextest-runner/Cargo.toml
@@ -37,14 +37,12 @@ guppy = "0.17.4"
 # Used to find the cargo root directory, which is needed in case the user has
 # added a config.toml there
 home = "0.5.9"
-http = "0.2.11"
 humantime-serde = "1.1.1"
 indent_write = "2.2.0"
 indicatif = "0.17.7"
 is_ci = "1.1.1"
 itertools = "0.12.0"
 log = "0.4.20"
-memchr = "2.6"
 miette = "5.10.0"
 once_cell = "1.19.0"
 owo-colors = "4.0.0"
@@ -84,6 +82,7 @@ zstd = { version = "0.13.0", features = ["zstdmt"] }
 ###
 ### Update-related features, optionally enabled
 ###
+http = { version = "0.2.11", optional = true }
 mukti-metadata = { version = "0.2.1", optional = true }
 # TODO: remove dependency on self_update, build our own thing on top of mukti
 self_update = { version = "0.39.0", optional = true, default-features = false, features = [
@@ -151,5 +150,5 @@ name = "passthrough"
 path = "test-helpers/passthrough.rs"
 
 [features]
-self-update = ["self_update", "mukti-metadata"]
+self-update = ["self_update", "http", "mukti-metadata"]
 experimental-tokio-console = ["console-subscriber", "tokio/tracing"]