Following popular demand, I have added a system which automatically checks for updates when you open many of my free apps. This apparently works satisfactorily, judging by the lack of complaints about it, but isn’t efficient for some of my apps, like Alifix 1.0 which was officially released earlier this morning.

When this mechanism runs, the app connects to my GitHub server and downloads a list of the current versions of my apps which use this system. It then finds its own name in that list, and compares versions, to see whether a newer one is available. For a more popular app which is likely to be updated every few weeks, this makes good sense, and should help you keep up with those changing versions.

Some of the utilities offered here change only infrequently. The previous version of Alifix, for example, was released back in January. If it had had an auto-update mechanism and you’d been using it twice a week on average, then it would have checked for updates about 60 times before finally downloading today’s new version. That’s not efficient.

One solution is to reduce the frequency of checks for updates, but that just extends the wait you’re likely to experience before being notified of them.

Today I offer what I hope will be better: an Updates category here, which will be low-volume and only contain articles announcing new updates to macOS, including security updates, etc., and updates to my apps. You can then add that category to your news reader, and get immediate notice there of the availability of those updates.

To subscribe (free) to this news feed, point your news reader at
https://eclecticlight.co/category/updates/feed/
or for Atom newsreaders
https://eclecticlight.co/category/updates/feed/atom/
noting that these are by HTTP not HTTPS.

If you’d rather not use a news reader, then you can access the same information by pointing your browser at
https://eclecticlight.co/category/updates/
where all the updates will be listed in chronological order.

If you want to manually check the Updates category, it isn’t listed in the top menus, which are already overcrowded, but down at the bottom of each page with all the other pages and categories.

This should now ensure that you can not only keep copies of my utilities up to date, but you’ll also get early information there about updates to macOS. I hope this addresses everyone’s need. This doesn’t replace the auto-update checks in many of my apps, but provides what I hope will be a better solution for others.