Summary
- Always update your apps for security and new features – Google Messages’ full-screen prompts may seem intrusive, but they protect your data.
- App developers can prompt updates, but Google’s new approach aggressively pushes users to update after each relaunch.
- While Google’s intentions are good, the constant prompts could set a precedent for all apps- a mixed blessing for Android users.
Updating apps is essential to ensure you always have access to the latest features and your data stays protected from bad actors trying to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities in older versions. While setting up automatic updates on the Play Store should cover your bases, app developers have the freedom to code in update prompts. However, Google Messages seems to have gone overboard in its latest attempt at a full-screen update prompt.
Developers can prompt users to install updates urgently if they patch critical vulnerabilities, but these usually show up as a small bottom sheet in the app with a button to update from the Play Store and another to dismiss the notification, and that would be the last you would see of it. However, the folks at Android Authority spotted Google using a new approach, showing users a new full-screen update prompt (Via @AssembleDebug on X).
It has the usual buttons to proceed with the update, lean more, or dismiss the prompt, but there’s a catch. The prompt to update religiously reappears every time you kill the app from Recents and relaunch it, and there’s no dodging it until you install the suggested update.
A vexation with your best interests at heart
It’s easy to see how Google Messages’ new aggressive prompting could get on your nerves, but update prompts are well-intentioned. Google even gave us a heads-up about this upcoming change in the Android Developers Blog in January, but we worry such a change will now set the precedent for all other Google apps.
The mandate could eventually follow for third-party apps pushing regular updates if Google issues a mandate sometime. While the change would benefit Android users everywhere with the prompt updates. Let’s just hope you don’t need a specific older version of an app to retain access to some now-redacted feature like birthday reminders.
