How to Update and Upgrade Manjaro Linux

It’s important to keep your Manjaro system up to date in order to make sure that you have the latest security updates and newest features. Manjaro is based off of Arch Linux. These are two Linux distributions that sit on the bleeding edge, meaning that the developers are always pushing the latest and greatest feature updates, but it’s up to you to retrieve them. In this guide, we’ll show you how to do exactly that.

Manjaro is on a rolling release cycle, so you never have to download a new version of Manjaro or worry about your current install reaching its end of life. Keeping Manjaro up to date can be done with a few clicks via GUI or a few keystrokes via the command line, and is very simple to do. Since Manjaro is on a rolling release schedule, updating Manjaro is just a matter of instructing your package manager to install all the latest versions of the software on your system. Package dependencies, conflicts, and outdated software are taken care of automatically. Let’s get started.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to update Manjaro via GUI
  • How to update Manjaro via command line
  • How to resolve issues with updating Manjaro

Updating installed packages on Manjaro in XFCE

Updating installed packages on Manjaro in XFCE

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System Manjaro Linux
Software N/A
Other Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Update Manjaro via GUI



In this section of the guide, we’re using XFCE for our desktop environment. Manjaro supports many different desktop environments, so if you downloaded or installed KDE, GNOME, or something other than XFCE, just know that your process for updating Manjaro could vary slightly. Regardless, every desktop environment has an application to update software, so you’ll just need to open your respective app when following these steps.

  1. To get started, open the Software Update program from the application launcher.
    Search for and open the Software Update application in your desktop environment

    Search for and open the Software Update application in your desktop environment

  2. In this window, Manjaro tells us which installed packages need to be updated. All you need to do is click “Apply” to begin downloading and installing the updates. If you want to see a list of currently installed software, and also have the option to remove it, you can click on the “Installed” tab at the top of the window.
    Open the Updates tab and click Apply to download all package updates

    Open the Updates tab and click Apply to download all package updates



  3. Installing updates always requires root privileges, so Manjaro will prompt you for your root password before continuing. Enter it and click Authenticate.
    Type your root password to install updates

    Type your root password to install updates

  4. You can monitor the progress at the bottom of the window as your packages are installed.
    Update progress is shown at the bottom of the screen

    Update progress is shown at the bottom of the screen

That’s all there is to it; Manjaro is now up to date.

Our Manjaro system is now completely up to date

Our Manjaro system is now completely up to date

Updating Manjaro via GUI should suffice 99% (or more) of the time. If you have any trouble, updating via command line (which we go over in the next section) allows you a little more control in resolving issues. Executing an update command in the terminal with pacman can synchronize your machine with official repositories and rebuild the database of repo information. Follow along below if you’d like to see how to do that.

Update Manjaro via Command Line



The advantage of updating Manjaro via command line is that we get verbose output about what the system is doing and we have a little more control in resolving issues, if any arise.

To get started, open a terminal and type the following command to update all of Manjaro’s packages:

$ sudo pacman -Syu
Updating Manjaro via the command line

Updating Manjaro via the command line

When I first learned about this command, I thought it was a little counter-intuitive to remember -Syu for installing updates (and remember that it’s case sensitive). But it helps to understand if you know what those options actually do:

  • -S: synchronize your system’s packages with those in the official repo
  • -y: download fresh package databases from the server
  • -u: upgrade all installed packages

That’s probably the only command you’ll need for upgrading Manjaro, but there are a couple of others worth mentioning. The first one is:

$ sudo pacman -Syyu

The only difference here is the extra y in the options. This forces the updating of databases for all repositories. With the normal command, databases are only updated if it’s been a while since the last update. This is a good command to use if the normal upgrade command is producing an error or failing to retrieve the latest software releases.

This next command can be used to downgrade packages:

$ sudo pacman -Syuu

It will basically perform the same function as the normal update command, but it will also downgrade packages on your system if they are a version ahead of what’s available on the official repositories. It’s rare that you’d need this command, unless you manually installed some brand new software and are having trouble with it.

Closing Thoughts

As you can see, the process for keeping Manjaro up to date is straightforward and easy. It’s recommended to update your system every few weeks or more often to ensure you have the latest security updates and software features. In this guide, we saw how to update Manjaro from GUI and the command line. We also learned about some extra update commands that can be used to resolve issues.



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