Updating

Updating

dots can check for new versions and upgrade itself in place. Update behavior is governed by your settings.

Checking

• Automatic: when update_check is enabled, dots checks periodically — no more often than update_frequency minutes apart (default 1440 = daily). It records a timestamp so it won't re-check before the interval elapses.
• Manual: run dots update, or open the Update screen from the TUI dashboard.

How the check works

• Normal mode: dots fetches tags from origin and compares your current tag against the latest v* release tag, using version-aware sorting so patch and minor bumps are detected correctly.
• Developer mode: instead of tags, dots compares against the tip of the upstream default branch and reports how many commits you're behind.

Applying an update

Upgrading runs git pull --ff-only in ~/.dots and then re-repairs all your symlinks so any changes are reflected immediately. The fast-forward-only pull means a local edit in ~/.dots will stop the update rather than create a merge — commit or stash local changes first if that happens.

After a successful pull, dots reports the version you're now on.

Reinstalling / pinning

You can always re-run the installer to move to a specific version:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CtrlUserKnown/dots/main/install.sh \
  | sh -s -- --version v1.6.0

See Installation for all installer options.