Sunday, July 5, 2015

Another Downside of Automatic App Updating

I have long had Settings ‣ iTunes & App Store ‣ Automatic Downloads ‣ Updates enabled but Use Cellular Data disabled. I thought the latter would protect me from unreliable cellular connections and wasting bandwidth. Unfortunately, I did not account for unreliable hotel Wi-Fi or what I consider to be an OS bug.

On a recent trip, iOS started downloading an update to Editorial but apparently couldn’t finish the process. This would be OK except that it left the app in an incomplete state where the home screen showed that it was in the process of updating, but the app would not launch. So I was unable to access my important notes. (Other Dropbox text editors would have worked but didn’t have the files cached on the phone.)

Previously: Downside of Automatic App Updating.

4 Comments RSS · Twitter


+1, the has happened to me w/ OmniFocus on iOS 7. Very frustrating.


I've found that restarting my device resolves this issue, at least in some circumstances.


This is an odd implementation of the feature. It seems like nothing would prevent Apple from downloading the app first, and then replacing the local app with the new one once the new one is fully downloaded (except maybe space considerations for larger apps like games).

That's what Android does, at any rate.


+1 to what Tim WB said.

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