Bulk update of apps

Please add an option to bulk update apps. It would be ok if each app update still has to be approved, if the user does not have to open and press update for each app.

Current workflow

Updates tab

• Press app A > Press update > App A downloads > Press install > Press done > Press back

• Press app B > Press update > App B downloads > Press install > Press done > Press back

Improved workflow

Updates tab > Press update all

• App A downloads > Press install app A > Press done
• App B downloads > Press install app B > Press done

This would decrease the number of user presses from 5 to 2 per updated app without requiring root.

for reference, in the old tracker: https://f-droid.org/repository/issues/?do=view_issue&issue=36

Reassigned to @dschuermann

I am working on this feature in the super-fdroid branch. Stay tuned :)

+1 on this issue, looking forward to it

Thanks for taking the time to request this.

mentioned in issue #106 (closed)

+1 this important!

According to past discussions, first we need background download support: #103 (closed)

Assignee removed

Due to time constraints, I no longer work on this issue. Feel free to reassign. I am still free to answer questions regarding the implemented Installers, e.g., root installer.

Thanks for your work, @dschuermann! Greatly appreciated.

mentioned in issue #106 (closed)

mentioned in merge request !66 (closed)

mentioned in issue #229 (closed)

+1, I would really appreciate this. Ideally the workflow should be that all updates are first downloaded, then installed, so that all downloading can be done in the background and then there is less time to wait between the install confirmations.

What is the status of this? For me personally it's the most wanted feature. It's really annoying and very user unfriendly to manually update apps.

We haven't even finished the system installer, which is required for this feature. As always, merge requests welcome.

What's the system installer? Is it not only a question of downloading the queued updates and install them?

The system installer lets us use system permissions to act as a package manager and do installs/uninstalls in bulk without the user's confirmation. This would allow for a much better experience, instead of having to watch each package install one by one with PackageManager.

If you want to implement an alternative with the default installer using PackageManager, you're free to develop one.

I'm not a developer. Just a user who asked for the status of this feature. Have to wait a bit longer than.

I guess especially the case with added required permissions could be complex. If the API changes it will probably also need more maintenance. For me it would be fine if the install dialogue appears a few times as long as the rest is automated.

I guess that's also what amazon thought when they created their app store because that's what happening there.

We can indeed implement this feature for F-Droid when normally install as well as when installed as a system app.

In both cases all apks should be downloaded in advance before starting the installation process:

• For normal F-Droid, this is important to be able to stack all "installation screens" together without having a download process in-between.
• For system F-Droid, we can do permission diffs only after having downloaded the apks (as far as I now, am I right @mvdan ?)

I've had F-Droid for a bit now and I just enabled Expert > Install using system-permissions and received the error "This option is only available when F-Droid is installed as a system app.". I've done a Google search but I am not seeing any clear instructions on how to enable System Permissions.

Is anybody familiar with an explanation for installing F-Droid w. System Permissions? I'd like to be prepared to test this functionality when available. Thanks.

@daryltucker an upcoming F-Droid version will guide you through the process of making it a system app, so no need to do it manually now :)

mentioned in issue #275 (closed)

Ref: mid:158B03E402D8C025.4-0856d53c-36b3-4353-83bd-ab6dee590a14@mail.outlook.com

Ref: https://f-droid.org/forums/topic/help-how-to-uninstall-multipleall-apps/

+1 because this is an important feature.

Is there any update on this? Many people I know get horribly confused because there is an update icon in the right-top of the update screen, which doesn't update a single app. I've ran into people pressing it over and over for about an hour not getting why it didn't update any app.

@mvdan I don't agree we need system installer support for this. It would be nicer, but it should be possible to use this on non-rooted devices too.

Patches welcome :) That's really all I can say since I don't have time to work on this.

I think the first step for this should be moving all the download/install code from AppDetails into a new IntentService. This way, downloads are also not cancelled when you exit AppDetails.

Then, we can just send a new intent for each apk that should be installed. I'm just not sure how we can stack the install screens together (what if the user starts one download, then starts another?)

@Nutomic see #103 (closed)

Wrong issue then, but I think my points still apply ;)

mentioned in issue #446 (closed)

One thing to consider: many devices may be unable to download all updates at once, due to limited storage (even a small number of apps to update can reach hundreds of megabytes). There should be a way to download, install, download, install, i.e. sequentially rather than downloading everything at once. Even if the process is automated, downloading all first isn't necessarily the best strategy.

mentioned in issue #585 (closed)

Milestone changed to 1.0

mentioned in issue #618 (closed)

mentioned in issue #617 (closed)

With 0.100, you can now queue up as many installs as you want, and they'll be downloaded in the background. This is very closely related to #106 (closed)

Added ~16415 ui labels

Added installer privileged installer labels

Is there an update on this? Sounds like the prerequisites are in place.

If you have the https://gitlab.com/fdroid/privileged-extension installed installed on your phone, and you enable Automatic Updates, this is working with 0.101-alpha6. To do bulk updates without system/root access, we're working on the UI there, you can see that here: #709 (closed)

Mentioned in issue #772 (closed)

Update: The UI for this is now in #840 (closed). Not far now people :)

And now, as per #840 (closed), this has been merged into master. Looking forward to getting this 0.103 alpha out some time soon so we can share all this goodness with you all.

closed