arch-update

arch-update [OPTION]

arch-update is an interactive update notifier and applier for Arch Linux. With no options it walks through the usual system-maintenance steps from the Arch Wiki: pending news, package upgrades (official repositories, and optionally AUR and Flatpak), orphan packages, old packages in the pacman cache, pacnew/pacsave files, a pending kernel that needs a reboot, and services that should be restarted after the upgrade.On a desktop it is typically used through the systray applet: arch-update --tray --enable starts the icon and autostarts it at login; arch-update --check --enable turns on the user systemd timer (boot, then every 6 hours by default). Clicking the icon runs the full update in a terminal. On a headless machine the same CLI covers listing, checking, and applying updates without the tray.Privilege elevation is done with sudo, sudo-rs, doas, or run0. AUR support uses paru, yay, or pikaur when installed. Desktop notifications require libnotify.

-c, --check

Check for available updates, send a desktop notification if any exist, and refresh the systray icon. Combine with --enable to start the user systemd timer for periodic checks.

Print the list of pending updates and exit.

Include AUR development packages when checking and applying updates.

Display recent Arch Linux news. count defaults to 5 (or to NewsNum in the configuration file).

Check for systemd services that need a restart after an upgrade.

Write a default arch-update.conf. Add --force to overwrite an existing file.

Print the current configuration file.

Open the configuration file in the configured editor.

Start the systray applet. Combine with --enable to install an XDG Autostart desktop file so it starts at login.

Print debug traces.

Print version information.

Print the help message.

Optional file, read from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/arch-update/arch-update.conf or ~/.config/arch-update/arch-update.conf. Generate an example with arch-update --gen-config. Option names are case-sensitive.NoColor

Do not colorize output.

Hide version changes when listing pending updates.

Ignore AUR packages.

Ignore Flatpak packages.

Do not send desktop notifications.

How many Arch news items to show (default 5).

AUR helper to use. If unset, the first of paru, yay, pikaur found on PATH is used.

Privilege-elevation command. If unset, the first of those found on PATH is used.

Old package versions to keep in the pacman cache (default 3).

Uninstalled package versions to keep in the cache (default 0).

Editor used when processing pacnew files (default $DIFFPROG, else vimdiff).

Arch Linux (and derivatives that use pacman) only. Applying updates needs a working privilege-elevation command; none installed is a hard error. GNOME Shell has no native systray, so the applet needs an AppIndicator extension. Clicking the tray icon uses gio to open a terminal; if no known emulator is installed, install xdg-terminal-exec and list one in ~/.config/xdg-terminals.list. Two instances cannot run at once.

arch-update is written by Robin Candau and released under GPL-3.0-or-later. It is packaged on the AUR as arch-update, with arch-update-bin, arch-update-cli, and arch-update-git variants.

checkupdates(8), pacman(8), pacdiff(8), paccache(8), paru(8), yay(8), flatpak(1)

Source code · Documentation