App changelogs

I think ever since I had a phone with an app store, I kept app updates manual. The reason is not to avoid or postpone any update, on the contrary, I update as soon as possible. The reason is that I like to see what exactly is updated within the apps. Is there some interesting change, new feature or bug fixes. During this time I noticed some app developers (big companies included) don’t pay that much attention to app changelog. Here are a few samples of app changelog that could be better at least:

• WhatsApp

  Recycling their changelog. It feels wrong when a few versions one after the other introduce a shiny new same thing.

  

• Mi Home

  Also recycling, but what pokes me in the eye is “Fixed: - fixed” part. Also “some” sounds like they are lazy to write what they actually fixed. But I believe they are too lazy to update the changelog.

  

• Pinterest

  They want to sound like this week they updated this thing specifically, but then this same text is used in all the changelogs visible in the history 😏

  

• OneDrive

  This one can be read as a novel. A too technical one for a regular user. Also mystery, do you think this app can run on iOS 16? And there were at least three last releases which could be run on iOS 15 😏

  

• Gmail

  Boring, Google 😒

  

• YouTube

  Artificially funny, just like Google 😒

  

• Google Docs

  Boring again, Google. But why that asterisk?

  

• Google Maps

  Vaccinated against a good changelog, Google?

  

• Google Photos

  Nothing to see here.

  

I understand some developers update quite often, and there are only details in between each update. But even a generic changelog would be better in that case than having a misleading one. I also believe some developers don’t give much importance to the changelog. Maybe they think nobody reads them at all, and I also believe wast majority of users don’t. In that case, it’s also best to have a generic changelog. For example, Google is one of such with always the same changelog. I wouldn’t complain, but it looks silly reading through the history with nothing important to see. I bet there is some important bug fix or feature improvement that was done in some of the releases. It’s surprising to me that a company that big doesn’t care about this.