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Accepted
Costa Michailidis
Asked: 2022-06-07 09:24:50 +0800 CST

Pending Update of Snap Store

  • 772

What's with 'Pending Update of Snap Store?'

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snap

9 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    There are a couple things happening.

    First, let's talk about the EASIEST way to make the notification go away:

    1. Quit the application (in this case, snap-store [a.k.a. Ubuntu Software]). You might not recall that you have it open, but you do. Maybe it's minimized. Find it and Quit the application. You can do that by opening system monitor.

    2. Run sudo snap refresh. Let the command complete.

      • If, instead of a refresh, you get a pop-up that the application needs to be refreshed, then run sudo snap refresh <application-name>.
        The output of that command will return the PID causing the block.
        Use kill <pid> to remove the block.
        Run sudo snap refresh again. This time it should work.

    3. It's now safe to re-launch your application.

      • If you were not using the application before, or you don't know how to launch the application, then you can safely ignore this step.

    Second, let's talk about WHY it's happening:

    Snapd detects when a new version is available. If the application is currently running, snapd will inhibit updating that application for up to 14 days.

    With most applications, this works fine. You Quit out of an application, a few hours later snapd updates the application (it checks several times each day). and the next time you open the application you don't even notice that it's been updated. Great!

    But some applications are open for a long time that runs up against that 14-day window. Like web browsers on laptops that get closed/suspended instead of quit/restarted. Unfortunately, when the 14-day window expires, snapd will kill the application in order to implement the upgrade. To the user, this looks like Firefox crashed unexpectedly, losing whatever they were doing.

    • Snapd MUST refresh snaps. That's a legacy of the original design; snaps were originally designed for phones and IOT devices that MUST work reliably and MUST update reliably without user input. You can disable it if you know how...but it's a bad idea for most users -- disabling updates means no security patches and insecure applications.

    Third, let's talk about why you are suddenly getting these notifications NOW.

    The Snap developers were dissatisfied with those two choices (kill the application to force the upgrade -or- disable upgrades entirely), so they created a better path: Remind the user to Quit the application. That is the notification you are seeing. It's new (turned on by default) in Ubuntu 22.04.

    • If you ignore it, then when the countdown reaches zero snapd will terminate the application and refresh that snap automatically.

    Finally, there's one obvious question remaining: Why isn't this automatic? or perhaps Why doesn't snapd download the update before nagging you?

    Well, that's a work in progress. The snapd developers welcome code contributions to help make that happen safely. Snapd is Open Source.

    • 93

  2. Works for me:

    1. Kill "snap" at System Monitor
    2. sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

    3. sudo snap refresh
    • 26 
  3. # Close all open `snapd` process
sudo killall -s KILL snapd
sudo snap refresh
    • 4

  4. I had the same issue, the notification shows that the snap involved is snap-store.

    If you run this in terminal, you will get a process ID (PID):

    sudo snap refresh snap-store
error: cannot refresh "snap-store": snap "snap-store" has running apps (ubuntu-software), pids:
       2452

    Then in the terminal kill that process and run it again:

    kill 2452
sudo snap refresh snap-store

    and it should succeed.

    The currently highest rated answer suggests that you have this running or minimized, but it seems to me it is just running without a user starting it and it does not show running in the dock. It looks like a bug to me. As mentioned, it should fix itself after 14 days by killing the application, which may just be inconvenient if you're in the middle of using it.

    Seems a work in progress, so perhaps some patience is in order, but if you don't have that, file a bug as described here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

    • 4

  5. Close all apps in your Ubuntu. Open Ubuntu Software app, under updates section, update the apps one by one. This trick worked for me.

    • 2

  6. In my case was a "Pending update of 'deja-dup" snap...'" so my two penny solution is open a terminal and type:

    sudo killall deja-dup-monitor
sudo snap refresh
deja-dup&

    (latest command runs deja-dup's GUI so that deja-dup-monitor is automatically restarted)

    • 1

  7. This worked for me:

    sudo snap remove snap-store
sudo snap refresh
sudo snap install snap-store

    I needed sudo in front of snap refresh to get it to work. This was the only option that worked for me. I also had to start Ubuntu Software app twice.

    This also cleared a Snap Store pending update that could no be updated because the Snap Store was running.

    • 1

  8. I solved the issue following these steps:

    1. log out from the graphical interface and start a command line session (CTR+ALT+F2 from the system login page).
    2. log in with your username and password and run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade and then sudo snap refresh.
    3. log out and start back the Ubuntu graphical interface (CTR+ALT+F).

    I suppose that the issue is related to the gnome session which seems to run on snap.

    • 0

  9. I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 and for me works:

    sudo snap refresh snap-store

    It will be downloading the necessary packages and at the end it should show you a message like:

    snap-store (stable/ubuntu-22.04) 41.3-60-gfe4703a from Canonical✓ refreshed

    I hope this helps someone else!

    • 0