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.
Gotta have an excuse to issue a new ToS and opt you back into everything you toggled off.
Security patches and rare bugs that most people don’t run into, mostly
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.
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).
