Braide keeps itself up to date through an in-app updater. Updates are surfaced by a small update pill in the toolbar — to the left of the settings cog. The pill only appears when there is something to act on, so most of the time the toolbar stays uncluttered.
The in-app updater is part of the packaged desktop app. When you run Braide from source it is inactive.
Background checks are silent: there's no Checking… indicator, and if there is no update, nothing changes in the toolbar.
When a check finds a newer version, an Update pill appears in the toolbar. Click it to open a popover containing:
Clicking anywhere outside the popover closes it again, leaving the update pill in place so you can return to it later.
Click Download to fetch the update. The popover closes and the pill changes to Downloading NN% so you can watch progress. Braide does not download anything until you ask it to — finding an update never consumes bandwidth on its own.
When the download finishes, the pill changes to Install. Click it to open the popover again, review the changelog one last time, and then confirm with Install and restart. Requiring that second, deliberate click matters because restarting Braide can interrupt active sessions — so the outcome is never a single accidental click away. While the app is shutting down and relaunching, the pill shows a spinner and Restarting…, and is disabled. If the install can't complete (see below), the pill returns to an actionable state rather than staying stuck on the spinner.
You can still Skip this version or Dismiss from the popover at this stage too — a downloaded update is not committed until you choose Install and restart.
Dismiss hides the update pill until the next check. The next automatic or manual check that still finds the update will bring the pill back. Use this when you want to deal with the update later in the same session or the next time you launch.
Skip this version hides the update pill and stops Braide from offering that specific version again. You won't be reminded about it on future checks — but as soon as a newer version is published, the update pill reappears for the new release.
Some failures can't be retried automatically:
.deb elevation failures — installing a .deb update needs administrator privileges through a running polkit authentication agent. On minimal, tiling-window-manager, headless, and SSH sessions there often isn't one, and the install fails. The popover quotes the exact sudo apt install ./… command to finish the update manually. See Installation for the Linux packaging trade-offs; the AppImage download self-updates without elevation and avoids this entirely.| Toolbar state | Meaning | Click action |
|---|---|---|
| (nothing) | Up to date, or checking in the background | — |
| Checking… | A manual check is running | (status only) |
| Update | A newer version was found | Open the changelog + actions popover |
| Downloading NN% | The update is downloading | Open the popover to watch progress / review the changelog |
| Install | Downloaded and ready to apply | Open the popover, then confirm Install and restart |
| Restarting… | Applying the update | (disabled) |
| Update Failed | The check or install failed | Open the popover for the cause and next steps |