Auto Updating vs Silent Installation

[tennisace57]

In the MyApps list in the app's context menu, what's the different between "Auto Updating" vs "Silent Installation?"

[dking02]

Autoupdating means that Home Updater will automatically start updating an outdated app when opening Home Updater. No user action is required.

Silent install means that the installation is done without displaying the user interface for the setup program or requiring any user action. You will get the default installation for the app and the installation process will not be displayed on the screen, including any options for the user to customize the installation.

There are global settings for these two options in the Settings tab and individual settings for each app in the My Apps tab.

[tennisace57]

Thanks so much for your explanation. It was very helpful. Relatedly, if the scheduled updates functionality is enabled, does it make auto update & silent installation moot?

For example, the schedule is set 9 pm daily and the PC is unattended.

[dking02]

I don't have any experience using the Home Updater scheduler feature. However, it would seem logical that  since scheduled tasks are meant to run without user presence, they would ignore these two settings and attempt to install all enabled updates silently.

This does not mean that autoupdate or silent installation settings are not useful. They do apply when the program is manually launched. I prefer to launch Home Updater manually and run with both autoupdate and silent installation disabled so I can control and observe any updates and take corrective action if needed. Home Updater is quite fast at scanning and installing updates so scheduling at off hours is not necessary.

[tennisace57]

I've been debating which approach is better: manual vs. scheduled updates.

In the past (e.g., version 4 and earlier) I've always gone the scheduled update route.

But in thinking about it further and based on your reasoning, I'm going to switch to manual updates, which is what I've done with Windows and my mobile devices.

As far as I know, PMPC doesn't notify the user that updates are available. If not, then I'll probably post a request to add that feature in the appropriate forum.

[dking02]

I update my primary desktop PC daily to keep it up-to-date and to limit the number of updates that need to be installed at any one time. Since I manually launch Home Updater at least once per day, the list of outdated apps that Home Updater displays from its initial scan suffices for all the notification I need from it. I have no need or desire for individual or daily notification of updates via email, text, or X.

Using Home Updater is insufficient for maintaining the PC since it, like most updaters, only supports a limited number of apps* which covers only a fraction of the software actually installed on my main PC. I have found that visually scanning the daily list of software updates on MajorGeeks.com is the quickest and most effective methods to promptly discover updates, supplemented by running several different software updaters (specifically, Home Updater and UCheck, and occasionally QuickInstaller or  UniGetUI) to possibly find additional updates.

I generally manually download and install updates for non-portable apps and for a majority of portable apps using a list of vendor links that I maintain rather than downloading and installing through the updater. However, if you do not want to manually update a machine regularly or don't need to maintain close oversight of installations (e.g., on lesser used, less critical machines), then manually initiated bulk installation of updates by the updater and/or scheduled tasks are the ways to go. In that case, it is best to limit the number of apps installed and preferably to ones that are well supported.

* There are a few  software updaters, such as SUMo (discontinued) and uCheck, which scan the programs on each user's machine and aggregate the data to detect the appearance of  new versions of programs (updates) installed within their user base. Updaters using this approach are not limited to a predefined set of supported apps. They emphasize monitoring and notification of updates and  generally do not support downloading or installing updates discovered using this method. Affected users are expected to know how to download and install updates since the apps are already installed on their machine. To address customer requirement for downloading and installation support, they may also offer a limited set of supported apps like conventional updaters.