Android: Auto Update Individual Apps On Play Store

Have you ever wondered if you could set only one android app to auto update in the play store, or even disable auto update for one app? Well, it’s very possible and I am going to show you how.

How To Auto Update One App In Play Store

Most people prefer to turn off the auto update feature in google play store because it could eat up a lot of your precious mobile data while you’re sleeping especially if you have a lot of games and large apps. The setting people end up choosing is auto update only via wifi, which is good if your neighbour hasn’t blocked you yet or if you often get connected to a data rich wifi network.

If you are mindful about your data usage and want to allow only a few important android apps to update automatically, follow this procedure:

1. Open up the Play Store app on your android phone.
2. Tap on the menu button (three hyphens) on the top left corner of the screen to bring up the side menu.
3. Choose Settings
4. Choose Auto-update apps, it should be first on the list (Kitkat).
5. From the list of options, choose Auto-update apps over Wi-Fi only.
6. Press the back button to return to the Play Store front page.
7. Tap on the menu button on the top left corner again, but this time choose My Apps & Games. This would take you to a list of all apps installed on your android phone.
8. Scroll to the app(s) you DONT want to receive automatic updates for, then tap on it.
9. Tap on the three dots icon at the top right corner of the screen, then uncheck box for auto-update. Do this for all the apps you DONT want auto-updates for, leaving only the important apps you want Play Store to automatically update for you. You might want to ask why we didn’t do it the other way by turning off auto updates then turning them on for the individual apps. Well you can’t, that’s the way play store was built (I’m on build 6.5.08.D-all). If you disable auto updates and then try to enable it on an app, you would get this: “Auto-update is currently disabled for all apps. Do you want to enable it? You can always change this in Settings. Data charges may apply.”
   Clicking Yes would turn it on globally, thus making your mission pointless.

You don’t have to worry about your settings resetting if you turn auto-updates off and back on.