If you Zwift on Mac or PC and love participating in group rides and/or races, you’ve probably had it happen: running late to your event, clicking to boot Zwift, and the “Updating” dialog pops up. Noooo!!!
Zwift, it seems, feels our pain. So after some testing in limited releases, yesterday Zwift announced the rollout of their new “defer update” feature to the Zwift launcher. (The Zwift launcher is the small program that handles authenticating your account, starting up the Zwift game, and updating the Zwift game, among other things.)
Here’s what the feature looks like on Mac and PC (note: only logged-in users will see the “Update Later” option):
If you click “Update Later”, the update will begin once you finish your Zwift session.
Requirements
To get deferred updates on your Zwift setup, you’ll need two things:
- A PC or Mac running the Zwift game app
- Launcher app v 1.1.10 (download here). If you’re on a version older than v1.1.9 (here’s how to check) – download and manually install the latest version.
What about iOS/tvOS/Android?
These platforms don’t force a game update like Windows and macOS, although many Zwifters have updates set to install automatically. You can opt out of auto-updates in App Store settings for iOS/tvOS/Android at the cost of missing improvements if you don’t update manually. In that case, you may eventually get a message in-game telling you to install the latest update.
Questions or Comments?
Read more about this update in the Zwift forum, or share your comments and questions below!
Oh wow! It only took them what, 8 years to figure that out?!
Finally!
Hi Eric. Do you know if the launcher will be ocasionally updated or I will have to update it manually?
I’ve sort of lost track of whether the launcher gets force-updated or not. Easiest thing, I would say, is to just follow the download link above and download the latest build to make sure you have the new launcher.
Is there going to be an ability for races/events to enforce a specific minimum version with stuff like this?
Can’t imagine it would be that great if a new feature/bug fix that had implications for a race lead to issues. For example imagine there’s another groupset weight bug that made the bikes affected extra light (or inexplicably more aero) that’s present in version X, but fixed in X+1. That’s going to screw with the results.
Or the new version enables access to a new world that’s hosting the race, you see the update, hit defer, load in, realize you have to update and then you lose time backing out.
I don’t know if it’ll end up causing more problems than it solves.
It sounds to me like they’ve just implemented some reasonably graceful rollback/legacy support on the server side and thought this would be a good idea too.
If it’s implemented properly then they won’t give people the option for critical – security, or safety (as, for example, the hardware dev. is back) bugs. That’ll be annoying but is necessary.
And the server-side updates will need to shape past versions which will lead to interesting and challenging decisions on where the fix is calculated/applied (e.g. fixing e.g. pack dynamics if you’re skipping updates and running 4.0ish or whatever). That would be, every time, a very interesting discussion/dev challenge. It can be done though.
If it’s not implemented properly — the first time it brings down the whole service they’ll probably re-evaluate this.
So the real goal here will be that less people miss their races less often. Good idea!
Nice…I’m usually late enough!
Holy Moly, something useful!!!!!
Any danger of them not implementing updates without additional bugs, making my PC crash!
I ran the update and I still can’t see rider shadows on Macbook using M1 Pro chip. Does this only apply to M2 chips?
Zwift says M1 and M2. But it’s not released to everyone yet… rollout ends Sept 12, I think.