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Not really a counter point because you mention a lot of other issues with f-droid that sound valid (I haven't used it myself) - but as a tangent regarding auto

Not really a counter point because you mention a lot of other issues with f-droid that sound valid (I haven't used it myself) - but as a tangent regarding auto updates, I disable them basically everywhere because I seem to have buggy experiences too often if I allow stuff to update all the time. I then go through the list of updates in the Play Store once a week or so and install those that I think might improve app functioning/stability. I look over and install Windows updates once a way-too-long (need to work on this). Feel like everyone is skimping on QA these days or something else fishy is going on. In the last handful of years there have been 2 or 3 Windows updates that either permanently erased data or caused some other insane issues. I didn't get them (tbf I understand that most people didn't), partially thanks to having auto updates disabled.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> In the last handful of years there have been 2 or 3 Windows updates that either permanently erased data or caused some other insane issues. I'm still mad about the Windows update that permanently stopped Windows from working with my Bose headphones. The headphones continued to work perfectly with anything that wasn't running Windows.
- infinityio 5y ago
  Out of interest, have you tested them on win11? One of the later win10 updates broke my Bluetooth headphones (actually, Bluetooth in general became pretty buggy), but they 'magically' unbroke after the upgrade
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    No, I haven't.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    ime bluetooth has been buggy ever since. not always, but it failed me countless times in the worst situations. one reason why a phone has to have a 3,5mm jack.
andai 5y ago
>I look over and install Windows updates once a way-too-long I thought you needed some kind of registry hacks or something to disable automatic updates since W10, can you elaborate on how you got it to stop pestering you?
- lsferreira42 5y ago
  I followed this website and it works: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-automatically-windows-10 https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-a...
  - andai 5y ago
    Brilliant, thank you!
cmeacham98 5y ago
This still sucks for your usecase on F-Droid. If you look through the available updates and pick 10 to install, you have to click through 10 popups to allow the installation, one for each update, waiting in between each for the previous update to finish before being able to approve the next.
- toastal 5y ago
  How many apps do you need installed (and why)? I feel like I'm a pretty heavy user, but if I forget to update for a week at most I have 6 apps to manually click through. It seems likes an insignificant gripe considering the other alternatives (Play Store, Amazon, Huawei, etc)
  - freddie_mercury 5y ago
    These are the apps on my phone that have updated in the past 7 days: Subway/public transit app (see how much money I have left on the cards) Grab (an Uber competitor where I live) Facebook YouTube Google Google Maps A bank app Signal Google Calendar GMail Android Auto Agoda, a hotel booking app Dropbox Netflix Instagram AirBnB A second bank app A boardgame helper app Uber TripIt Microsoft ToDo Shopping app for the baby store we order diapers and formula from every few days Pocket Spotify Proton calendar Facebook Messenger Google Docs Google Photos Google Voice Google Sheets You Need A Budget Tiktok Shopee, an online shopping app I use nearly every day My country's covid vaccine tracking app Google Translate
    - toastal 5y ago
      From F-Droid? Are you not choosing Aurora store? (Yes, I know what those apps are, I'm in the same region and time zone as you)
      - freddie_mercury 5y ago
        Not from F-Droid. I was just replying to the parent's claim that normal people don't need a lot of apps. If I don't have a laptop or desktop, why wouldn't I have a lot of apps on my phone?
freedomben 5y ago
Yep, me too. I used to evangelize frequent updates because of the security aspect. However over time I kept getting burned by disruptive or buggy updates that broke things that I depend on. The last straw for me was a few years ago when my podcast suddenly stopped playing. When I unlocked the phone to investigate why the episode had stopped the UI had completely changed, in a way that I was completely lossed and had to start over learning it from scratch. I was right at the beginning of a long road trip and had pre-downloaded many hours were of stuff to listen to because I didn't have much data in my plan. All of the episodes I had downloaded were gone. Additionally because I was driving, learning a completely new interface was horribly dangerous. That was the day I disabled auto updates, and now I manually approve each one. Certain apps where I don't want to risk UI changes or new bugs, don't get updated right away. When they do, I always backup the old APK first so I can easily restore it if needed.
- tentacleuno 5y ago
  F-Droid lets you downgrade apps. The only problem is that due to Android's security protections, you have to uninstall the app to install an older version (downgrade protection).
- mehdix 5y ago
  Exactly the same here. Nowadays I go through the changelog and often I realize there is no changelog for the update, or it is totally irrelevant for me (e.g. bug fixes for other android versions or problems which I don't have, marketing changes, cosmetic changes, features I don't need, etc.)
istillwritecode 5y ago
I also disable auto updates once every six months is enough for me. I really really don't care about the security of these apps.
axiolite 5y ago
> regarding auto updates, I disable them basically everywhere because I seem to have buggy experiences too often With Play Store I agree. With F-Droid, I do not. You can easily install older revisions if you find a problem, which I almost never do with F-droid.
mackrevinack 5y ago
i got stung a few times and have turned off updates since. it wouldn't be such an issue if the play store would allow you to roll back to a previous version
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  Even if Android would let you easily downgrade apps, the problem remains that each individual app would also have to support that scenario, too (by never doing any data migration that would leave the user data no longer readable by the old app version).
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
Personally, I've found that disabling auto-updates just means either unnecessarily sticking with outdated/buggy versions (or versions that drift out of sync with backend services and acquire new bugs that way), or I spend way too much time manually maintaining my phone instead of actually using it. I don't have time to read release notes/research each new version, so I'd likely just spend 10 minutes hitting "update" on everything, then getting bitten by the same issues. (This is specifically in regards to Android apps, not other platforms).
- autoexec 5y ago
  > Personally, I've found that disabling auto-updates just means either unnecessarily sticking with outdated/buggy versions (or versions that drift out of sync with backend services and acquire new bugs that way), I guess I don't care if my apps are "outdated" as long as they still do what I want. If there's something buggy about an app that annoys me enough I'll often just uninstall the buggy app and find an alternative. I find that once I install an Fdroid app and I like it, it'll pretty much just keep working just the way I want it to. The only app I use that breaks if I don't update it is NewPipe and that's google's fault. It doesn't happen often enough, or take long enough to update to offset the benefits of using it. Even most my regular google play store apps don't actually "need" to be updated, and many haven't been since the day they were installed with no bugs or issues.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> In the last handful of years there have been 2 or 3 Windows updates that either permanently erased data or caused some other insane issues. I'm still mad about the Windows update that permanently stopped Windows from working with my Bose headphones. The headphones continued to work perfectly with anything that wasn't running Windows.

infinityio 5y ago
Out of interest, have you tested them on win11? One of the later win10 updates broke my Bluetooth headphones (actually, Bluetooth in general became pretty buggy), but they 'magically' unbroke after the upgrade
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  No, I haven't.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  ime bluetooth has been buggy ever since. not always, but it failed me countless times in the worst situations. one reason why a phone has to have a 3,5mm jack.

andai 5y ago

>I look over and install Windows updates once a way-too-long I thought you needed some kind of registry hacks or something to disable automatic updates since W10, can you elaborate on how you got it to stop pestering you?

lsferreira42 5y ago
I followed this website and it works: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-automatically-windows-10 https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-a...
- andai 5y ago
  Brilliant, thank you!

cmeacham98 5y ago

This still sucks for your usecase on F-Droid. If you look through the available updates and pick 10 to install, you have to click through 10 popups to allow the installation, one for each update, waiting in between each for the previous update to finish before being able to approve the next.

toastal 5y ago
How many apps do you need installed (and why)? I feel like I'm a pretty heavy user, but if I forget to update for a week at most I have 6 apps to manually click through. It seems likes an insignificant gripe considering the other alternatives (Play Store, Amazon, Huawei, etc)
- freddie_mercury 5y ago
  These are the apps on my phone that have updated in the past 7 days: Subway/public transit app (see how much money I have left on the cards) Grab (an Uber competitor where I live) Facebook YouTube Google Google Maps A bank app Signal Google Calendar GMail Android Auto Agoda, a hotel booking app Dropbox Netflix Instagram AirBnB A second bank app A boardgame helper app Uber TripIt Microsoft ToDo Shopping app for the baby store we order diapers and formula from every few days Pocket Spotify Proton calendar Facebook Messenger Google Docs Google Photos Google Voice Google Sheets You Need A Budget Tiktok Shopee, an online shopping app I use nearly every day My country's covid vaccine tracking app Google Translate
  - toastal 5y ago
    From F-Droid? Are you not choosing Aurora store? (Yes, I know what those apps are, I'm in the same region and time zone as you)
    - freddie_mercury 5y ago
      Not from F-Droid. I was just replying to the parent's claim that normal people don't need a lot of apps. If I don't have a laptop or desktop, why wouldn't I have a lot of apps on my phone?

freedomben 5y ago

Yep, me too. I used to evangelize frequent updates because of the security aspect. However over time I kept getting burned by disruptive or buggy updates that broke things that I depend on. The last straw for me was a few years ago when my podcast suddenly stopped playing. When I unlocked the phone to investigate why the episode had stopped the UI had completely changed, in a way that I was completely lossed and had to start over learning it from scratch. I was right at the beginning of a long road trip and had pre-downloaded many hours were of stuff to listen to because I didn't have much data in my plan. All of the episodes I had downloaded were gone. Additionally because I was driving, learning a completely new interface was horribly dangerous. That was the day I disabled auto updates, and now I manually approve each one. Certain apps where I don't want to risk UI changes or new bugs, don't get updated right away. When they do, I always backup the old APK first so I can easily restore it if needed.

tentacleuno 5y ago
F-Droid lets you downgrade apps. The only problem is that due to Android's security protections, you have to uninstall the app to install an older version (downgrade protection).
mehdix 5y ago
Exactly the same here. Nowadays I go through the changelog and often I realize there is no changelog for the update, or it is totally irrelevant for me (e.g. bug fixes for other android versions or problems which I don't have, marketing changes, cosmetic changes, features I don't need, etc.)

istillwritecode 5y ago

I also disable auto updates once every six months is enough for me. I really really don't care about the security of these apps.

axiolite 5y ago

> regarding auto updates, I disable them basically everywhere because I seem to have buggy experiences too often With Play Store I agree. With F-Droid, I do not. You can easily install older revisions if you find a problem, which I almost never do with F-droid.

mackrevinack 5y ago

i got stung a few times and have turned off updates since. it wouldn't be such an issue if the play store would allow you to roll back to a previous version

iggldiggl 5y ago
Even if Android would let you easily downgrade apps, the problem remains that each individual app would also have to support that scenario, too (by never doing any data migration that would leave the user data no longer readable by the old app version).

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

Personally, I've found that disabling auto-updates just means either unnecessarily sticking with outdated/buggy versions (or versions that drift out of sync with backend services and acquire new bugs that way), or I spend way too much time manually maintaining my phone instead of actually using it. I don't have time to read release notes/research each new version, so I'd likely just spend 10 minutes hitting "update" on everything, then getting bitten by the same issues. (This is specifically in regards to Android apps, not other platforms).

autoexec 5y ago
> Personally, I've found that disabling auto-updates just means either unnecessarily sticking with outdated/buggy versions (or versions that drift out of sync with backend services and acquire new bugs that way), I guess I don't care if my apps are "outdated" as long as they still do what I want. If there's something buggy about an app that annoys me enough I'll often just uninstall the buggy app and find an alternative. I find that once I install an Fdroid app and I like it, it'll pretty much just keep working just the way I want it to. The only app I use that breaks if I don't update it is NewPipe and that's google's fault. It doesn't happen often enough, or take long enough to update to offset the benefits of using it. Even most my regular google play store apps don't actually "need" to be updated, and many haven't been since the day they were installed with no bugs or issues.