Updates are your answer to random bugs and corruptions in your Windows apps. Moreover, they also patch up any security loopholes that hackers might exploit later.

App publishers release frequent updates that help you patch up all the above issues. On Windows 11, you have different ways to get these updates. In this article, we take a look at all of them.

How to Update Windows 11 Apps

There are two major categories of apps on any Windows 11 PC: Microsoft Store apps and third-party apps. We'll cover them both, so let's get started.

Updating Third-Party Apps on Windows 11

Let's knock third-party apps out of the way first. Third-party apps encapsulate all the apps not available on the Microsoft Store.

The only way to update these apps is through the app interface itself. Launch the app and click on the in-built update button. For instance, we'll first try and update PDFsam, a professional PDF editing app. Then, all we've to do is head to the Updates section of the app and click on download to get the latest update.

pdfsam updates

In this case, there's also a feature to enable auto-updates, as you can see above. That's how you can update most third-party apps on your Windows 11 PC.

How to Update Microsoft Store Apps

Microsoft Store apps are those that you downloaded from the Microsoft Store. You have two ways to update such apps. You can either do it manually or automatically. Generally, automatic update is enabled by default, but you can do it manually too. Here's how.

  1. Head to the Start menu search bar, type in 'Microsoft store,' and select the best match.
  2. In the Microsoft Store app, select Library from the bottom left corner of your screen.
  3. Click on Get updates to check for and download all the app updates on your system.
microsoft app updates

Do this and Microsoft Store will check for all the available updates and download them one by one.

Enable Automatic Updates

Automatic updates keep you secured by installing the latest patches as soon as they become available. So if you have auto updates enabled, you won't have to give this any thought at all. Even though there might be situations where you might want to disable automatic updates, it is enabled by default on most Windows PCs. However, if it's disabled in your case, or if you simply want to check, here are the steps you need to follow:

Open the Microsoft Store app, click on the profile icon and select App settings. From there, make sure you've toggled on the App updates option—this will enable the automatic updates on your Windows 11.

app settings

But if you're having trouble opening the Microsoft Store app on your Windows 11 PC, you must fix it to ensure your apps are automatically updated.

Updating App Updates on Windows 11

And that's how you can update your apps on Windows 11. Hopefully, you were able to update your Windows 11 apps without too many difficulties. But your updates aren't limited just to apps. Like individual apps, updating your entire Windows operating system is also a big part of keeping your settings up to date—so make sure you do that periodically as well.