FYI - Changes to App Library

[dking02]

The Home Updater v5 App Library was initially released containing 512 supported apps in late Oct 2024. Over the past few months, the app library has grown by an additional net 20 apps. The associated addition and removal of apps, as well as renaming of apps and changes to their assigned category, are not announced and are likely to go unnoticed. The attached 2-page PDF lists the apps which have been added or removed and summarizes the current distribution of apps by app type (non-portable and portable) and category.

The PDF includes two embedded files which are accessible from the Attachments pane of a PDF viewer like Adobe Acrobat Reader, Foxit PDF Reader, or PDF-Xchange Editor: (1) an exported app list in JSON format for the 532 apps in the current library and (2) a corresponding conversion of the JSON app list to an Excel spreadsheet with an added Category column and formatting. Because some simpler PDF viewers do not support file attachments to PDF documents, these two files have also been included in a separate .zip file attachment to this message. The list of supported apps currently provided on the Home Updater product web page (https://patchmypc.com/product/home-updater) does not reflect updates to the app library and should be regenerated similarly to these two files whenever apps are added or deleted or names of apps or vendors change.
 

[OldNavyGuy]

I find the search function in the "Patch My PC Home Updater supported product list" section on the page https://patchmypc.com/product/home-updater/ more productive.

[dking02]

The Home Updater product web page is marketing material for potential new users. If you are already a user, the search function within the App Library tab has access to the latest list of supported apps and additional app info, such as version, category, and app type (portable or non-portable). As noted above, the list of apps currently available on the product web page has not yet been updated and all 26 of the added apps listed in the PDF attachment are missing and all nine of the removed apps are still returned in search results.

The included JSON and Excel files were provided as examples of using the existing exported app list function to provide a current list of supported apps and their attributes for offline use; for example, for comparing lists generated at different dates or lists of supported apps from different updaters. Note that Category data is not currently exportable and had to be manually added, and Version data is transient. Hopefully other requested app attributes will eventually be added and all attributes made exportable.

Correction: Para. 1 of my post mentioned that addition and removal of apps have not been announced. The release notes for v5.0.11.0, 13-Feb-2025, actually did list 9 of the 26 added apps and 5 of the 6 removed apps documented in the attached PDF. Subsequent additions and removals of apps, as well as changes to names, vendors, and categories were not announced and were determined by manual (visual) inspection of displayed app lists or text comparisons of exported app list files.

[OldNavyGuy]

I'm sure PMPC gets (all) that...

That said, we no longer use PMPC...for several reasons...mostly due to v4 functionality we frequently used and considered critical to our use cases not being ported to v5.

So documentation of what apps are available/not available are non-issues for us.

[Justin Chalfant (Patch My PC)]

Good call out. You're totally right that the list on the Home Updater page hasn't been keeping up as we've added apps on the backend. We'll look into automating the update of the CSV that builds that table so it stays in sync going forward.

Appreciate you taking the time to flag it and include the extra context and file examples. Super helpful.