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We asked, you told us: 65% of you throw caution to the wind and auto-update apps

I'm surprised more people don't have automatic app updates turned off.
By
January 25, 2020
Google Play Store app showing up on Pixel 3 smartphone

We all have dozens of apps installed on our smartphones, and keeping them up to date manually can be a chore. That’s why the Google Play Store has a handy setting tucked away that lets you keep all your apps up to date. As new updates roll in, your phone will automatically update those apps.

Many of us at Android Authority actually turn off automatic app updates, though, and there are a few reasons why you might want to as well. Personally, I like to check the changelogs of my favorite apps before I update them just to see what new features are rolling out. Some people are more cautious and turn off automatic app updates because, in certain cases, developers can roll out updates that break the functionality of their apps. The last thing you want to do is receive a bad update and have to dig around for a previous APK in order to downgrade and make the app work again.

A few days ago, we asked you if you turn on automatic app updates, or if you manually update your apps. The results can be found below.

Do you auto update your apps on Google Play?

Results

49% of Android Authority readers do keep automatic app updates turned on, but only over Wi-Fi, while just 16.7% keep app updates turned on over both mobile data and Wi-Fi. That’s a total of 65.7% of people who auto-update their apps. 34.2% of readers keep automatic app updates turned off.

Noteworthy comments

Here are some of the best comments from last week’s poll explaining why they voted the way that they did:

  • Being a Substratum user, Disabling Automatic Updates is the first thing that I end up doing :D
  • No one can escape the updates you can only buy yourself some time. Not updated apps will stop working sooner or later.
  • Shutting off automatic updates didn’t stop play services and playstore from updating automatically, at least not for me. Is there any way to do that?
  • Theres need to be an option to stop seeing apps updates for particular apps that I don’t want to update them to newer version.
  • Exactly why I manually update apps. I tend to read the reviews for major updates especially and see that key features were nerfed.
  • I’ve noticed recently that the menu bars which for some reason have been placed INSIDE the search bar often open search instead of the menu, which is another issue Google should fix.
  • Google Play starts updating apps immediately after I put my phone on charge. Sometimes (mostly when the battery is low) it causes excessive phone heating.

That’s it for this week. As always, thanks for voting, thanks for the comments, and don’t forget to let us know what you thought of the results below!