Improve the Status for Automatic Updates

[hl2guide]

Please consider improving the status for automatic updates.

• What is it doing? (info in menu)
• Is it downloading it? (no info in the status bar or menu)
• Was it successful or did it fail to download? (no info in the status bar or menu)

Area:

Even a simple "Downloading Update: 46%" would go a long way.

[JaspalSuri]

Hi @hl2guide, thanks for the feedback. 🙂 We understand that the are some areas for improvement for the update experience with the desktop apps.

As for the first button in the screenshot, it doesn't appear until the update has successfully downloaded. I think it might help if we delayed the alerts both inside & outside of the updates menu (in the bottom of the app) until the update was ready to install, or after a certain amount time has passed and/or the update has failed to download. This way the user would only interact the updates menu when they can install the update or whenever they are notified that an update has failed to download and that they need to click on the link to the latest release and download it from there. What are your thoughts on these changes?

[hl2guide]

Sounds really good. Currently is the downloaded update package file checked/verified against a hash of some kind?

[JaspalSuri]

Hi @hl2guide, thank you for letting me know! I'll forward your question (and feedback on the update process) to the dev team and someone will get back to you.

[antsgar]

Hi @hl2guide! How are you? That's right, desktop builds are code signed, and we use electron-updater for installing updates, which verifies this signature when checking for an update.