Applications that have been installed via Flatpak, just like those from other sources, will occasionally need to be updated. The Flatpak service can be used to keep your installed applications up to date. In this tutorial, you will see how to update all your Flatpak applications either individually or all at once on a Linux system.
It is always a good idea to keep your Flatpak applications up to date. Developers will regularly release new editions of their software with security patches, bug fixes, and new or improved features. By keeping all your applications up to date, you can take advantage of the newest features and are less likely to run into issues. This is an essential part of system administration and keeping your PC stable and healthy.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to update all Flatpak applications
- How to update an individual Flatpak application
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Any Linux distro |
| Software | Flatpak package manager |
| 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 |
How to update Flatpak application – command examples
Follow along with our example commands below to update your Flatpak applications (commonly just called “flatpaks”) on a Linux system, whether you want to update a particular package or just bring all installed apps up to date.
- Usually, you will just want to update all of your installed applications with a single command. That can be accomplished by executing:
$ sudo flatpak update
- If, instead, you would like to update an individual application, you can supply the
--appargument and specify which application you want to update. For example, this command would update the GIMP package downloaded from FlatHub:$ sudo flatpak update --app org.gimp.GIMP
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we saw how to update Flatpak applications on a Linux system. Keeping all of your Flatpak applications up to date is an important aspect of maintaining a secure and healthy Linux environment. Fortunately, Flatpak makes updating our applications a breeze, and can be accomplished with a single command.
