Ahow many updates receives an app, is now considered a “good” metric somehow now. So now if dependabot pushes a PR, it’s a new release on the app stores (of course without testing)

The algorithms on the app stores now consider the app “active” and push the app “up” in ranking

There was a certain billionaire bragging about his app getting 3 vibe-coded updates a day while the competition “only” got 3 a week

So, they can’t write a real change log. What can they write? “Dependabot updated leftpad from 1.1.3.2 to 1.1.3.3” “untested: updated Gradle from 8.14.2 to 8.14.3” “200mb update to change a comma in the Hungarian translation”

“We’re updating the segmentation logic of our A/B test infrastructure to downgrade its respect for the CloudFlare score when deciding whether or not to mark a session as coming from a bot. This was skewing the data on several of our start screen UI experiments, particularly within APAC data.”

Sometimes, you really don’t want to hear it ;D

For apps with generic update messages that also have source control and changelogs available: check to see how often the updates are just a manifest version bump and nothing more. Way greater than zero.

Most version revs for apps are just to reset review count and bury negative reviews with “review of an older version”.

It’s all gamification of walled gardens. Walled gardens that need to die.

chime: a PM asked an AI to write this after the only dev that knew how to do this quit

Discord: The PM was frustrated with the devs not summarizing this release crap that no one cares about anyway and hid it behind a link ah that’s so much cleaner now.

Instagram: fuck you

Linphone:

Hey just due to your mention of Insta thought you might wanna take a look at this

https://www.distractionfreeapps.com/

I’ve used it for a good while now and really like it but outside of that not an expert in terms of security or features. But it stops the updates, and I can choose to switch off pretty much everything and purely use it as a messaging app.

“Fixed errors in the French translation” might only appear in the French change log.

“performance improvements and bug fixes”

Because there’s a very strict character limit on the Google Play store side for update messages. So if it’s a bigger update, all I can do is put a summary of the changelog there.

just trust us bro, no spyware in here, bro.

I think a lot of times they don’t want you to know what’s been updated. For instance, pointing out all the bugs you’re fixing might make your app look like it’s always full of bugs. Or the security fix might draw attention to issues that exist for currently outdated apps.

Not saying it’s a good reason, but maybe that’s their thought process.

Youtube also does this. Basically it says “To see list of changes, look in the app guide” or something like that; no morons, I want to know what you changed BEFORE updating.

Welcome, your Ford Pinto is fully up to date!

changelogs should be legally mandated on app stores

I 100% agree that proper changelog should be provided, but to defend devs a litte, the play store changelog character limit makes it almost useless for anything but very small changes.

Though doing funny haha in the changelog is so dumb, they should be like “this changelog field can’t handle the changes, please see the changelog inside the app”

Also happens with some apps on fdroid. “Update available” - click to see, nothing there