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Automatic Updates

When installed via the Setup EXE, InstrumentControl keeps itself up to date using Velopack. The portable ZIP build does not auto-update — to update it, download and extract the newer ZIP manually.

How it works

On every launch — before the main window opens — the app checks the project's GitHub Releases for a newer version:

  1. If a newer release is found, a dialog asks whether to update now.
  2. Yes downloads only the changed files (delta update) and restarts into the new version.
  3. No skips the update for this launch and starts normally.

The version offered is compared against the currently installed version, so you are never prompted for a release you already run.

Offline / isolated networks

Update checks need internet access to reach GitHub. If GitHub is unreachable (for example on an isolated lab network), the check times out after 10 seconds and the application starts normally. A missing network never blocks startup.

Loop protection

A broken release could otherwise cause an endless download → apply → restart → download loop. To prevent that, InstrumentControl tracks failed update attempts:

  • Each failed download/apply attempt for a given version is counted in %LocalAppData%\InstrumentControl\update_state.json.
  • After 3 consecutive failures on the same version, that version is skipped until a newer one is published.
  • A newer version resets the counter, so a later good release is still offered.

Update log

All update activity — checks, downloads, timeouts, failures and skips — is appended to:

%LocalAppData%\InstrumentControl\update.log

This is the first place to look if an installed copy is not updating as expected. Example lines:

[2026-06-17 09:12:03] Downloading update 1.4.27...
[2026-06-17 09:12:31] Update failed: HTTP 404 on delta package
[2026-06-17 09:12:31] Recorded failure 1/3 for version 1.4.27

Files at a glance

File (under %LocalAppData%\InstrumentControl\) Purpose
update_state.json Last attempted version + failure counter (loop protection)
update.log Human-readable history of update activity
settings.json UI language preference (unrelated to updates)