WinTUI v2.5.0

WinTUI v2.5.0 introduces a per-package update policy (Ask/Auto/Hold), an on-launch auto-update flow, two new upgrade subcommand modes, and a significant refresh-latency fix for users with long winget package IDs.

Per-package update policy

Each package can now declare how WinTUI handles its updates:

• Ask (default) — the existing behavior. Updates appear in the list and you decide when to apply them.
• Auto — eligible to be upgraded by wintui upgrade --auto and by the on-launch countdown (see below).
• Hold — kept out of the upgrade list entirely.

The policy is a first-class field on each per-package override (update_policy: ask | auto | hold). The legacy ignore and ignore_version keys keep working — the planner treats them as Hold, so existing settings.json files don't need to be rewritten or migrated.

Two ways to set the policy:

• From the main package list, press t on the focused row to cycle Ask → Auto → Hold (winget / msstore packages only — non-canonical rows like MSIX or ARP entries don't get a toggle).
• From the package detail view, the Package Rules editor (p) gains an update_policy field alongside the existing rules.

See docs/package-rules.md for the full field reference.

wintui upgrade --auto and --id

Two new modes for the headless upgrade subcommand, both reusing the same streaming pipeline as --all:

• wintui upgrade --auto — upgrade only packages with update_policy: auto. Lower blast radius than --all for cron jobs and scheduled tasks: held packages stay held, Ask packages stay Ask. Mutually exclusive with --all.
• wintui upgrade --id <pkg> [--id <pkg> ...] — upgrade named packages from a pipeline. Held IDs error out with exit 1, unknown IDs are no-ops, and the running WinTUI binary is skipped with the same hint --all and --auto already use.

See docs/cli.md for the full reference and the new Recipes section.

On-launch auto-update

When you start wintui and any Auto-policy package has an update available, a 5-second cancelable countdown modal appears before the upgrade batch starts. Press Enter to start immediately or Esc to cancel the auto-batch and use the TUI normally. Once cancelled, the countdown won't re-appear in the same session — only an explicit r refresh will re-evaluate.

The WinTUI self-package is deliberately filtered out of the on-launch batch even when set to Auto. Self-upgrade can't run unattended (the handoff needs an explicit Enter when admin, Ctrl+A when not), so WinTUI defers it to the regular Updates flow and surfaces a banner explaining that your Auto setting was acknowledged but isn't running this round.

Headless CLI cleanup

The deprecated root flags wintui --check and wintui --list (last issued a deprecation warning in v2.4.0) are removed. Use wintui check and wintui list instead.

Bug fixes

• Refresh no longer stalls on packages with long winget IDs. Truncated-ID recovery now runs lazily at action time instead of during every listing, so launch and r no longer pay a per-row cost for IDs that winget abbreviated with … in its table output.

Notes

• No breaking changes to settings, keybindings, or the v2.3.x self-upgrade handoff.
• settings.json is fully backward compatible — Ignore and IgnoreVersion still work, just routed through the new planner as Hold.
• wintui upgrade --auto does not upgrade the running WinTUI binary; like --all, it skips with a hint pointing at the TUI.

Full release notes: docs/release-v2.5.0.md