Synology company was founded in 2000, has a specialty in Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. A NAS is a computer that is optimized for data storage and may have additional functionality.
Synology NAS
Synology has a very user-friendly Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. Also, there are many add-on packages to add the functionality of the Synology NAS like sharing files on the cloud, setting up a VPN environment, sharing photos to an online album or even an antivirus to protect the system. Everything can be found & done with few clicks in Package Center. The result will be a multi-function device which performs the tasks of a full-size computer.
The Synology platform is so much more than just simple network-attached-storage & keeping the packages updated is critical in ensuring a bug-free & smooth experience.
Synology NAS offers automatic download & installation of updates for packages but in some cases, the user wants to install updates manually.
To get started with the update process,
- Navigate to the web-based interface of the Synology NAS.
- On the desktop, the Package Center shortcut will be shown. Remember that if there are packages in need of update you’ll see, like in the screenshot below, a red indicator displaying the number of them.
- If you cannot find the Package Center shortcut, you can always find the shortcut for the Package Center by clicking on the Start Menu-like button in the upper corner to access your full application list. Package Center Shotcut with Updates Pending
- Inside the Package Center , the default view is “ Installed ”, showing all your installed packages with any packages in need of updates, if applicable, “ Attention required ” section will display the list in the top. Package Center
- In three ways packages can be updated from here.
- Click the “ Update All ” button to update all the packages without reviewing then.
- You can selectively update by selecting the “ Update ” button beside each entry in need of updates.
- Finally, if you wish to review the release notes for a particular update before approving it, you can click on the general entry for an individual application package to see the detailed view.
Let us the package “ Hyper Backup ” to see what the update entails.
Detail view of a Package
Here in the detailed view, we can see there is an additional “ Update ” button and, more importantly for our purpose, the “ What’s new in version ” release note section that highlights what the update adds/removes/repairs. In this case, it’s just a simple bug fix.
At this point, you can manually approve the update by clicking the green “ Update ” button, or fall back to the previous menu to review your other updates and to update all the packages at once without the user interference click the “ Update All ”.
One thing you may notice on this detailed view is the small “ Auto-update ” checkbox beneath the “ Update ” button. Let’s take a look at the automatic update feature now.
Setting Your Packages to (Selectively) Auto Update
While you can check the “ Auto-update ” checkbox in the detailed view, as described in the previous section, there’s a much faster way to turn on bulk (& selective) automatic updates. For this purpose, let us follow the steps below
- From the main list of packages, click on the grey button labeled “ Settings ” along the top edge of the window. Settings in Package Center
- Select the “ Auto Updates ” tab in the Settings menu, which is along the upper navigation bar. Auto Updates in Settings
- In the Auto Updates menu of the Settings, check the “ Update packages automatically ” option and then set either as the “ All packages ” option or the “ Only packages below ” option.
7 Auto Update All Packages or Selected Packages
To enable selective automatic updating, simply check off all the packages that you do not wish to keep automatically updated. Click “ OK ” to save your changes after you are done, Your Synology NAS will now automatically update the application packages whenever new updates are rolled out.
