Notifications and updates

Notification Center

Everything Rapidly wants to tell you collects in the Notifications screen: finished and failed downloads, things that need attention, and news from LankaNova Digital Solutions. The bell shows how many are unread. Routine things such as retries are not shown; things you need to act on are. You can switch on do not disturb for an hour or until tomorrow morning.

News and tips come from Rapidly's own website. Each item is plain text; the app removes any markup, and a link is kept only when it is https and points to the Rapidly site or github.com.

How updates work

Rapidly checks for a new version a short time after it starts and then about every 6 hours. Before it downloads anything it:

1. reads a signed description of the newest release from the Rapidly website,
2. checks the signature with a key built into the app,
3. checks that the installer is hosted on github.com and that the version is newer,
4. then downloads it and checks the file against the signed SHA-512.

If any step fails, nothing is installed and the About page says why.

When it installs

A new version installs the next time you close Rapidly, or when you choose Restart to update. Before the restart, every download is paused safely and continues afterwards. Rapidly never restarts by itself, even for a critical update; it only keeps a banner on screen until you choose.

If a release is withdrawn after you downloaded it, it is not installed.

Turning things off

Settings, Privacy has two switches: one for checking for new versions and one for fetching news. With a switch off, Rapidly makes no request at all for that purpose. You can still download a newer installer from the website by hand.