How to make sure that your apps are up to date [Android 101]

Keeping your apps up-to-date is important for a number of reasons. New features, better performance and battery optimizations are just some of the improvements most developers are constantly pushing out to you. Updating apps is also important if you’ve received a phone software update, as developers are always making sure their apps work with the latest versions of Android. Updating apps can be done in a couple different ways: 

Automatically

This is the easier way to always keep your apps up-to-date. You can choose to automatically update your apps at any time, meaning even while your not on WiFi the updates will be downloaded with mobile data, or you can choose to update only when connected to WiFi. Either of these options can be toggled in the Google Play Store Settings page, which can be accessed in the left swipe-out menu.

Manually

You can also simply choose which apps you would like to update and leave others alone. Sliding out the same Play Store menu from the left gives you the option to choose ‘My apps‘. Tapping this brings you to a list of all your installed apps. The apps with available updates are at the top. You can either tap ‘Update All‘ at the top, or individually tap apps to update only those.

It’s not unwise to be cautious about which apps you update. Some apps require certain permissions before updates, some of which you may not agree with. These permissions can include knowing your location, collecting personal data, or other things you may find invasive.