[ENHANCEMENT] Autoupdate certain apps

[kylek29]

Please confirm these before moving forward

• I have searched for my feature proposal and not found a work-in-progress/duplicate/resolved/discarded issue.
• This improvements refers to an existing feature. If you want to suggest a new feature, please use this template
• This improvements is not a bug. If you want to report a bug, please use this template

Describe the improvement

I may be missing this option (correct me if I am). Right now it seems there are two options for handling updates -- "Ignore Updates for this package" which puts it in the ignored updates group and removes it from the "Software Updates" tab, and toggling on "Auto Updates" globally in settings ("Update Packages Automatically").

Is it possible to get another option for "Do Not Auto Update" (or "Ignore Auto Updates") for a specific package that would be a hybrid of these? Alternatively, "Allow Auto Updates" would be the inverse. The global settings would probably need a default select (e.g. Do Not Allow Auto Updates or Allow Auto Updates) for new packages.

The idea is that there are some packages I trust the repository/source to be maintained enough to allow for automatic updating, so I'm okay with those updating whenever the scan returns a new version. There are other packages I want to confirm the update myself (e.g. via the Software Updates tab). Right now, if you turn on Auto Updates, you have to "Ignore Updates" on the other packages, which puts them in the ignored list and removes them from the view.

Describe how this improvement could help users.

It'd help users by providing the in-between functionality of the Auto Update and Never Update groups in the UI. Select apps can auto update, other apps require the user trigger the update.

[marticliment]

Yes, this could make sense

[TheHellSite]

+1 for this.

I would also love to see an option enable/disable auto updates per package.
For me the reason would be to only update packages like (VLC, 7-Zip, ...) that do not have any built-in auto update feature, apart from availability notifications.

[GollyJer]

+1
This seems like a great v3 enhancement. 🤠

[RaptDept]

+1
As convenient as it may seem, auto-updating on a blacklist basis (as it works currently) can actually cause more problems than it solves, because there is a class of apps that don't always update cleanly via package managers due to drivers or locked processes and files.

It's possible for the user to forget to blacklist (skip updates on) certain apps that are already installed when there are hundreds of them. New apps whose update behavior is unfamiliar to the user can also pose a problem when allowed to auto-update by default.

It would be great to have a whitelist (instead of the blacklist we have now) to make the auto-update process more seamless and unobtrusive to daily use. I'm hesitant to enable auto-update as it's implemented now because a problematic package might disrupt my work during crucial times.

[VOOM108]

+1
I feel this would be very useful, I also prefer a whitelist-version: in general not allowing auto-updates, but activating it for trusted packages. I tried to do this with a script and event manager, as a test for one package, this worked for a few days then broke. It is a package that updates in small increments almost daily, but never breaks anything. The notifications for manual updates would then be reserved for packages where I want to see, what is happening.