Sparkle

Raised as a usability problem by 5 people on Hacker News over 7 years (2019–2025), in 5 threads.

People raised many different problems with Sparkle, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 5 complaints

Updating requires many steps and waits, blocking use of the app2025-05-28
Update modal interrupts at random times and ignores Do Not Disturb2024-02-13
Sparkle is very complex to set up, with XML appcasts and signing2023-01-14
Auto-update setting ignored; updates fail and need app restart and retry2021-03-12
Update prompt forces an interrupting choice mid-task instead of updating quietly in background2019-09-26