Why am I getting so many frequent updates to my apps?

[theuntechnicaltechie]

Hi! So the past few weeks I've been prompted by Google at least every 2-3 days (no exaggeration) to update a lot of my apps.

For example, today it prompted me to update 11 apps. Out of the 11, 9 were updated yesterday.

Yesterday it prompted me to update 16 apps of 13 had been updated 2 days prior and so on.

Most of the apps reasons for the updates are generic.

I don't have auto update on.

I have a Galaxy Note 9 which effing Bluetooth hasn't worked in 6 months either but that's for another day.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[theuntechnicaltechie]

Some are the 16th, 17th, 18th. Also the 6, 7th,9th,11th,12th,13th

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Can you tell if the version numbers of the apps are going up?

BTW, I moved this from the Android Apps forum to the General Help forum, since the former is intended for developers to promote their apps.

 

[ManiacJoe]

Google staggers the update notifications for each app so that Google's servers are not flooded with update requests. As a result, your phone can easily get the update notifications in multiple waves when a large number of updates get published by the devs on similar days.

If you have auto-updates turned off, and are not checking frequently, the stack of updates can build up.

 

[theuntechnicaltechie]

The versions aren't going up, they are staying on the same number. I have always updated apps when given the heads up from Google that they needed updating so I don't know why it just started doing this. Should I just switch to Auto-update?

 

[theuntechnicaltechie]

I am getting alerts from Google every other day, at least and that's no exaggeration, to update apps. So a lot of the same apps are being 'updated' every couple of days. But, I just discovered thanks to B. Diddy, that the version #s were not going up. They've been staying the same.

 

[B. Diddy]

The version or build numbers are exactly the same? Sometimes there can be a very subtle difference between updates.

If you're still getting these frequent update notifications, see what happens if you clear the app cache and data for both the Play Store app and the Download Manager app in Settings>Apps. To find the latter, you have to tap Menu>Show System first.

 

[Rukbat]

The developer may npt change the version number if they catch a little bug after the last update went out.

And with 2.7 million apps, even if every app is updated only once a year, that's still almost 7,400 apps per day. But, since most apps are updated at least a few times a year, we're probably looking at (taking old apps that don't get updated any more) more like 10,000 apps per day. So getting 16 updates per day, for different apps, isn't a lot if you have apps that get updated frequently. (Some are well-tested before release, and are only updated when something is added or changed, but some ... anyone can "make an app" these days, with no programming knowledge, and not a glimmer of an idea that the app should be thoroughly tested before release, so a lot of apps get updated once a week or more.)

 

[hallux]

I would say the looming release of Android Q and the final APIs for the new OS now being available to the developers will have something to do with it. If your apps are "mainstream" or popular apps and the developers like to keep "on the ball" with OS support, many are probably getting support for the new OS baked in already and then patching bugs related to that in a very timely manner.