Too frequent updates are disruptive

Mateusz Bartczak

Does a text editor really, really need to download updates that often?

It’s really great, that development is so active, but probably updates should be a bit more consolidated into quarterly releases

I mean, each week I open my notepad I’m greeted with “Update available” message. It’s quite annoying

Please at least think about your update policy

Alan Kilborn

@Mateusz-Bartczak said in Too frequent updates are disruptive:

I mean, each week I open my notepad I’m greeted with “Update available” message

Dubious.

There has been 1 release as of this writing for 2023 (~6 weeks in).
There were 12 releases in 2022.
There were 18 releases in 2021.
There were roughly 9 releases in each of 2018-2020.

None of these equate to “once a week”.
“Once a month” would be more accurate – you were only off by a factor of 4.

I’m greeted with “Update available” message

So, turn it off.

but probably updates should be a bit more consolidated into quarterly releases

Well, that would be an approach. Everyone has a different feeling about an approach to a release schedule.

Does a text editor really, really need to download updates that often?

I suppose if users like new features and bug fixes, then…yes?

Malstroem Phi

@Alan-Kilborn Long and happy user of notpad++, as much as I love it and can appreciate the hard work, I too felt for years that the updates were too disruptive, so I turned it off.

If there was a solution to get them in the background or some Windows store distribution, it would not be an issue, (since we would not have to go through the re-installation process every single time). I think that if the update were a matter of a single click with a very quick restart, it would not bother people like me as much. As it is, even once a month is too much for me. I have a feeling lots of people will disable it and all the hardwork put into those updates will be less impactful. This is not the only app on my system and if every app updates once a month in a disruptive way, I would get pop ups and re-install procedures every day…

I would add that most users don’t notice the small bugs and do not need to update, in a perfect world I would recommend a granular notification system where you can choose what can of update you want to know about, for instance you could choose to skip small fix about features you never use but be notified for security updates or other more critical stuff.

Side notes I had to agree to this in order to post something (which I did not want to):

I’ll probably delete the account after a while if it turns out emails are too frequent.

Lycan Thrope

@Malstroem-Phi ,
The problem with your argument, is that as @Alan-Kilborn has pointed out, you are free to turn it off in the settings. (Setings->MISC.) where you will not only be able to turn it off(Enable Notpad++ auto-updater deselected), you will be able to Update silently and other options in that Preferences dialog, but…you also can, when asked if you want to update, say no. I did it a lot. However, then you run into problems when bugs that were discovered in not only Notepad++'s code base, but also the fixes that were made in the libraries (Scintilla/Lexilla) that are a part of the Notepad++ code base and that need to be updated into it.

You have all the options that you and any one that is annoyed by the frequency of updates, to use to handle the situation on your own, by Reading The Fine Manual…or asking here how to do it. :-)

Alan Kilborn

@Malstroem-Phi said:

I’ll probably delete the account after a while if it turns out emails are too frequent.

I have been a member for a long time and I can’t recall ever being emailed.

PeterJones

@Malstroem-Phi said in Too frequent updates are disruptive:

Side notes I had to agree to this in order to post something (which I did not want to):

Our Logging-in FAQ has more on that…

Essentially, the “personal information” it collects was what is sufficient to create your account, defaulting to whatever you’ve put in your Google or GitHub name/email/avatar fields, after which you can edit what is shown.

For the email, there has not been an “update” email sent to the entire userbase in the 9 years I’ve had an account here. For the the notification emails, they are 100% under your control settings – there’s a whole page in your settings devoted to setting your individual preferences, and you can turn off all those emails you want. When we were offering a digest, you could also disable it on the same page, but we turned off digests recently because it was causing too many server errors and causing our email server to be blacklisted as spam.

And most of my last paragraph was essentially explained in the message you read.

So I am confused why you were worried enough to proclaim:

I’ll probably delete the account after a while if it turns out emails are too frequent.

The message you quoted was pretty clear that they wouldn’t be frequent unless you set them to be, and was quite explicit that you could turn off notifications that you didn’t want. I am not sure why this message set off your “worry” reflex.

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Back to the main content:

I think that if the update were a matter of a single click with a very quick restart,

The updater now has the one-click silent update feature, so going forward, the update process should be fairly painless – or at least, have fewer clicks than it used to require. (Though I agree, it asks at an inconvenient time for some – many would want to wait for the update until they are done with the app, rather than immediately after it was launched; the developer has not seemed willing to change the timing of it.)

in a perfect world I would recommend a granular notification system where you can choose what can of update you want to know about, for instance you could choose to skip small fix about features you never use but be notified for security updates or other more critical stuff.

Notepad++ has never really distinguinguished different types of releases. All releases include minor bugfixes, new features, and any needed security fixes. So every release would fall under all the categories (or at least two of the three – security fixes are likely not as frequently needed, depending on your definition of “security fixes”).

And in case you didn’t look at the “read this post first” or the FAQ it points you to – this forum is the Community of fellow Notepad++ users, so none of us here have the decision making power for how Notepad++ implements updates.