How often do you update your apps on your devices?

me:

  • android: 2x per year, except some app needs an update to work
  • linux/manjaro: every few months, except security stuff (ik its a rolling release distro but I hate updating frequently)

A while ago I updated mostly directly after publish. But since more and more apps (primarily Google services, Social Media, …) get shitty updates which include AI and bloat, I try to update as less as possible while stil trying to get important and new features.
But many apps freak out when not applying these updates in this timespan, which makes it really annoying when needing an app urgently. Then having to update them with eventually bad network makes me aggressive.

Which are your opinions?

  • Pretty much as soon as a stable release happens for software on my phone. On my PC it mostly depends (for not-games) how annoyingly the update popup is placed. If it tells me on startup “Now (including a restart of the program) or we’ll remind you on next startup” I usually pick later because I want to work on that, e.g. PDF, immediately. By the time I did the work, I either forgot about updating (repeat cycle next time I use it) or the manual update option is somewhere too obscurely placed and I’m too lazy to find out where.

    One of my programs - I think it’s Foxit PDF reader - offers an option to run the update when I close it. That’s so lovely, because it allows me to do my work now and when I’m done, I can let it update in peace while I start something different.

    Edit: Because I read Win10 in the comments: For OS updates, I carefully vet the major releases. I stayed on my XP until Win 7 released and was actually an improvement. Then I only upgraded to Win 10 when I acknowledged it as good and because Sea of Thieves wouldn’t run on Win 7. Currently I’m trying to stay as far away from Win 11 as I can. We use it at work and I wouldn’t want to bring this peril into my home.