I feel like my phone apps update constantly. In general, that’s a good thing, I assume. I figure they’re fixing bugs or whatever. However, I don’t run into issues very often, nowhere near the rate of updates, and nothing seems to change after the update.
Compare that to Steam games which update really infrequently and the changes are usually much more obvious.
Security patches and rare bugs that most people don’t run into, mostly
Most apps will be built using libraries to provide functionality.
For example a Lemmy client might use a small database to store cached data on the device so it doesn’t have to redownload data as you navigate back and forth. Rather than writing their own code to create and maintain the database that functionality is available as a library they can import into their app and use immediately.
There might be dozens or even hundreds of libraries in any given app, this is great in that the app developer can focus on their app specific features and not worry so much about the low level features but these libraries also have their own release schedule and may only support security fixes on their current version.
This can result in a situation where you could have weekly or monthly updates just to include library updates even if you haven’t added any features directly to the app itself.
As a hobby developer, I feel like I’m just gluing libraries together to get what I want.
Hobby? That’s all the “real” stuff is too.
In my job as a software developer I’m mostly gluing libraries together.
In my hobby developing software I’m writing the libraries people glue together!
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Best answer here. The wide use of open source software inside other software leads to precisely such a situation.
Gotta have an excuse to issue a new ToS and opt you back into everything you toggled off.
While I can’t speak to specific apps alot of times it’s house cleaning stuff.
Maybe some bug that affects a certain number of users is found and fixed. And the update resolves that bit, since you weren’t affect, you don’t notice it.
Other times it’s to include fixes in libraries they’re using. So, for example, a JSON parsing library may have a security fix and they updated their app to use that newer version.
Another could be some behind the scenes api/library updates. Maybe a service they’re using for content (such as interacting with Lemmy) or maps or advertisements is being updated and they need to point their app to the new service address or change how they interact with it.
And of course there could be feature updates but those, usually, would be things you’d notice. Although, in some cases, it may be packaged with the application but waiting for some criteria (a backend service to be ready) or may even be part of A/B testing where some users get one change while others don’t so the developer can see which features are preferred using real data.
Not every change is going to completely overhaul the app. More than likely, the changes are a fix to some obscure bug not caught in testing that only affects a small percentage of devices. Just because you don’t encounter it with your workflow and device doesn’t mean it isn’t a critical bug preventing someone from using the app. It could also be a new feature targeting a different use case to yours. It could even be as simple as bringing the app into compliance with new platform requirements or government regulations (which can happen a couple times a year, for example Android often bumps the minimum SDK target such that apps are forced to comply with new privacy improvements).
Some good answers here. Also developers regularly add or update translations, support new features your phone doesn’t even have, compatibility with a different smartwatch, or regular bugfixes that only trigger in special circumstances and just for some users… All of that is difficult to notice for the regular user. Unless you buy the latest smartwatch an try to operate the app with it, or set your phone to Arabic.
And then there are maintenance tasks that don’t add any (visible) features. And apps are generally part of some more infrastructure at the respective company. Internal changes in their workflow or related software might change things. Or they decide to prepare something for the future or make it more efficient.
Sometimes they just update the year in the copyright notice. Or they re-build the app with the latest versions of the libraries that are supplied by different companies or open source projects. Those regularly change, fix bugs and generally you don’t want to depend on any old software library versions with known bugs and vulnerabilities. So there are a lot if reasons why software gets updated without visible changes.
I see a lot of the other reasons mentioned, but one I don’t: on android you are required to release updates at least every year-ish or they will completely delete your developer account and app.
Source: got that message recently for an app I made and haven’t had a reason to update.
What a crock.
I get the reasoning, but there’s gotta be a better way to manage stale apps.
I have a number of apps that aren’t on Play and work fine, I just save the apk or back it up with Swift or Neo Backup.
Its pretty crazy. I was very taken aback by the email. Dev accounts aren’t even free.
The standard answer is “security”…and that may be true in some cases.
But a lot of it is just job justification. Some beleaguered coder somewhere has to do a thing because their manager has to do a thing because their director has to do a thing and so on. Box checking exercises.
Also the app is probably built on a mountain of dependencies all of which have updates and security patches and bullshit. Delaying those updates for too long makes finally making a real update a nightmare, so you occasionally release updates just to keep up.
I’m glad in my 30 years of work I’ve never even caught a whiff of this nonsense. I’d undoubtedly heckle someone who proposed it to the point where I’d be fired. And I’d do it again.
I’m not normally a conspiracy guy but I have an old app that I swear they update (but not really) just so that people think it is active.
(No sources) but apps with no updates get removed from the stores. So yes , some updates are “nothing”.
Read the patch notes and see what’s changing. Usually it’s “squashing bugs”, but there could be a few new features you’d like in there.
Many developers (especially popular apps) like to go into great detail, like this…
lol I just checked and I had 26 pending app updates. Every one of them had about the same level of detail.
The only exceptions were the Wikipedia app and Voyager, both of which listed some new features.
There are maybe 3 of my ~50 apps that provide actual changelogs. All the others only write “bug fixes and performance improvements”, puns or other marketing pitches.
I disabled auto updates and only update if there are actual changelogs or the app doesn’t let me use it anymore without updating. But there have been too many automatic enshittifications for me to trust auto updates.
Yeah, try using Android 3 Honeycomb. Go on. Give it a try.
It’s not that nothing changes. It’s that changes are small. Humans react violently to big changes. If you change everything about an app all at once, people will hate the app, and leave.
If you make all those same changes, but spread them out over 2 years? They adjust. It’s like giving someone a pill to swallow. You don’t give them a pill the size of a watermellon, and expect them to swallow it. Instead you break it up into pieces and slowly feed them the whole pill over time.
Spelling mistake in commented notes.
Oh god. These app updates are so huge, I wonder if anything about this is diff/delta.
Maybe I’m old but having 20 apps wanting 200MB+ updates and all of them having the filler text gets to me.
It’s a number of reasons. One I don’t see already mentioned is that Apple and Google require apps to target the latest versions of their OSs and libraries. For example Google released a new version of the Google Play Billing Services library. All apps were required to update to the newest version by mid August (you could request a two month extension). So to the end user it seems like nothing has changed. But under the hood the app is now using the latest apis. This could also apply to non-Google/Apple apis. Maybe a change of the developers own api was necessary.
I would set that automatic app update off, apps are to known to sometimes update to newer enshittied versions like Fantastical did.
What’s better is on an iPhone or iPad you can set the apps to auto update and it will not auto update. It’s normal for me to check and have 15 apps that have updates that have been sitting there for a month.
Same with Apple Watch. They have this feature that tracks sleep but guess what? You won’t get software updates if you do that because it only updates at night.
