Greypaint: why do Mac app updaters still feel outdated?

I built Greypaint after getting frustrated with how Mac app updaters still feel like technical utilities from years ago.

Most of them work, but the experience is often cluttered: unclear update states, scattered sources, confusing errors, and no obvious way to know what is happening during an update.

Greypaint puts installed apps into one inventory and checks available updates from sources like Sparkle, Homebrew, GitHub releases, and the Mac App Store where supported. It also separates downloading from installing, explains failures, and supports rollback when available.

Is this a problem you care about, or are existing Mac updaters good enough?

If you use one, what matters most to you:

  • Better UI

  • More reliable update detection

  • Broader source coverage

  • Clear progress and errors

  • Rollback support

I’d genuinely like feedback on whether this is a problem worth solving and what you would expect from a good Mac updater.

I built Greypaint around this idea:

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clear progress and errors is the one that'd actually get me to switch. most updaters fail silently or throw a generic error and I end up guessing whether to retry, redownload, or just reinstall from scratch. rollback support is nice to have but I'd rank it below just knowing WHY something failed. does Greypaint surface the raw error from the source (Sparkle/Homebrew/etc) or does it normalize it into its own message?

If something is wrong it says its wrong, and if an update isnt supported it says so too