How to update blender

How do I Update Blender Without Reinstalling it?

Blender is a 3D graphic creation tool that comes free. This is an open-source tool with which short films can be created, animations can be applied, gaming applications can be built, and many more. All media related to 3-dimensional pieces of content can be designed and developed using Blender.

Blender does not have a feature to automatically update a new release. A single production release cycle is a 3-months period. It means a new release of Blender comes out every three months.

To update the new version of the blender without reinstalling it, use third-party tools to update it. Here the article provides information on these tools that will help the user to update Blender without reinstalling it.

The dependency of the external applications or platforms works the same as any mobile app developed by any company but deployed on the Google Playstore or the App Store. From the store, the apps are updated with the latest version. Similarly, Blender can be updated using these platforms.

Table of Contents

Update Blender Without Reinstalling it Using MS Store

Update Blender Without Reinstalling it Using Snap Store

This store is available for Linux operating system-related apps. Blender for Ubuntu distributions can be found on the Snap Store.

Update Blender Without Reinstalling it Using Steam

The Blender app is available for all platforms (Windows, macOS, and Linux) from Steam. The only thing is – the user needs to download and install the Steam app on the system and from there, Blender needs to be updated.

Update Blender Without Reinstalling it by Blender Launcher

Blender Launcher is available on Github for Linux and Windows operating systems. The launcher manages the different versions of Blender and works as a standalone tool.

Updating to latest Blender version

I currently have version 2.74. How do I update to version 2.76? I do not see any links in the UI to update my version of Blender

7 Answers 7

You can install Blender via Steam, which has a built in auto-update feature.

This should keep your Blender installation up to date automatically.

Another easy method is to click «Blender Website» under the «links» section on the application splash screen.

If you’re on a Mac and using Homebrew you can install/update Blender via:

You can find any official Blender verison here.

Just select the version you want and the system you are running it on.

If you have installed Blender using Snap packages on a Linux machine. ( Step to use snap package can be found here: https://snapcraft.io/blender)

To install using Snap you can use the following command on terminal:

Note: We need to have ‘snapd’ package already installed.

And, to update Blender using Snap you can you the following command:

Note: If you already in version 2.80, there would be no update available as 2.80 is the latest stable release.

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README.md

A small crossplatform (Linux, Windows, OSX) Python3 GUI application to check https://builder.blender.org/download for the latest buildbot version. Download and install nightly builds with one click. Brought to you by Overmind Studios.

If you want to support me, feel free to donate on Ko-Fi!

Frozen binary files for Linux and OSX coming soon. As of now, just run «python BlenderUpdater.py» on your system (make sure that the dependencies are met).

Specify a folder on your system (e.g. C:\Blender ) where the Blender build will be copied to. The tool will not create a new directory by itself, so make sure you create one first. Then click on the «Version Check» button to see a list of currently available builds. The ones matching your operating system will be highlighted. Click on the desired version to download and copy to your specified folder. When everything has finished, you’ll see a «Run Blender» button to start the new version right away.

In case there is an update for BlenderUpdater, you’ll see a button in the top right corner to go to the download page.

Due to UAC starting in Windows Vista, you cannot use the C:\Program Files\ directory as a normal user. Please choose some other destination on your hard drive OR right-click the application and choose «Run as Administrator» to be able to access those special folders.

Developed with Python 3.7. It should work with Python 3.6 as well, but no guarantees here. It uses Qt.py as an abstraction layer for Qt, so you should be able to use either PySide2 or PyQt5 in the background.

This application was originally developed for in-house usage at Overmind Studios. Released as-is.

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Small crossplatform Python 3 application to update Blender to the latest buildbot version

Should I update Blender?

I have blender version 2.76b. I have noticed that blender doesn’t update it self automatically. Is there a reason for that. And also if i update my blender, will I be able to work on blender projects from previous version of blender without any errors or problems? Thanks

6 Answers 6

Blender as no builtin automatic update system at the moment, you always have to download and manually install new versions.

They are for the most part backwards compatible except for major versions like the jump between 2.49 to the 2.5 series, or between 2.79 and the 2.8 series. Apart from some small additions or changes you should always be able to open your files without problems on newer versions unless stated in the release notes.

If there is no particular functionality from the dropped features list you specifically need, and if your hardware is compatible with newer versions, it is always advised to upgrade, unless you are in the middle of some critical project, commercial production work, or a complex scene, in which case you are advised to finish your work before messing with the software installation.

New versions can bring bugs and introduced regressions or some time have issues with newer driver and hardware.

If you want something close to an auto update system you can try the Steam version of Blender.

As far as I can tell, people are enjoying 2.77 more than 2.76b. You’ll be able work on your previous projects without any problems. An automatic update option would require Blender contacting the server prior to starting, which would increase the time Blender takes when starting up (some computers already struggle with start-up time, as Blender is a dense program with lots of functionality written with a simple language), especially if it struggles in contacting the server. And if it does find there’s an update, artists may feel pressured to postpone their work while it updates, or while they try and figure out the new features. Not to mention the annoying reminders, prompting the need for a «Not right now, never bother me again.» check box.

Ulus, in your case, I would not expect that you should not have a problem accessing files created in 2.76 from 2.77,after updating. I have sometimes experienced problems when attempting to open a

.blend file created in a much older version, in a much newer one, for example, trying to open a file created in 2.4x, perhaps downloaded from a site like Blendswap. I have found that two things reduce problems when making such an attempt. One is to open the file in an intermediate version, save it, and then open it in a current version. So, if I download a file created in 2.49 or 2.5, I might open it first in 2.62 or 2.63, save it, and then open it in a more recent version. The other thing I discovered that reduces problems loading older files is to clear the the «Load UI» button in the file browser, outlined in the light blue box in the image below.

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If the button is not cleared, then the user interface stored in the file will load, and if it’s an old enough file, the UI will be dramatically different than the one to which you are likely accustomed.

How to update blender

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Blender Addon Updater

With this Python module, developers can create auto-checking for updates with their blender addons as well as one-click version installs. Updates are retrieved using GitHub’s, GitLab’s, or Bitbucket’s code api, so the addon must have it’s updated code available on GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket and be making use of either tags or releases.

⚠️ Please see this page on known issues, including available workarounds

Want to add this code to your addon? See this tutorial here

This addon has been updated and still works from Blender 2.7 through 3.0, see this section below.

From the user perspective

With this module, there are essentially 3 different configurations:

Note the repository is not currently setup to be used with single Python file addons, this must be used with a zip-installed addon. It also assumes the use of the user preferences panel dedicated to the addon.

High level setup

This module works by utilizing git releases on a repository. When a release or tag is created on GitHub/Bitbucket/Gitlab, the addon can check against the name of the tags/releases to know if an update is ready. The local addon version (in bl_info ) is used to compare against that online name to know whether a more recent release is ready.

This repository contains a fully working example of an addon with the updater code, but to integrate into another or existing addon, only the addon_updater.py and addon_updater_ops.py files are needed.

addon_updater.py is an independent Python module that is the brains of the updater. It is implemented as a singleton, so the module-level variables are the same wherever it is imported. This file should not need to be modified by a developer looking to integrate auto-updating into an addon. Local «private» variables starting with _ have corresponding @property interfaces for interacting with the singleton instance’s variables.

addon_updater_ops.py links the states and settings of the addon_updater.py module and displays the according interface. This file is expected to be modified accordingly to be integrated with into another addon, and serves mostly as a working example of how to implement the updater code.

In this documentation, addon_updater.py is referred to by «the Python Module» and addon_updater_ops.py is referred to by «the Operator File».

About the example addon

Included in this repository is an example addon which is integrates the auto-updater feature. It is currently linked to this repository and it’s tags for testing. To use in your own addon, you only need the addon_updater.py and addon_updater_ops.py files. Then, you simply need to make the according function calls and create a release or tag on the corresponding repository.

Step-by-step as-is integration with existing addons

These steps are for the configuration that provides notifications of new releases and allows one-click installation

These steps are also represented more thoroughly in this text tutorial

Copy the Python Module (addon_updater.py) and the Operator File (addon_updater_ops.py) to the root folder of the existing addon folder

Alternatively, a more condensed version of the UI preferences code may be draw with the sample function addon_updater_ops.update_settings_ui_condensed(self, context, col) instead of the above function.

Note that the col input is optional, but allows you to add this function into an existing structure of rows/columns. This condensed UI doesn’t show settings for interval (just an auto-check toggle, will use default interval) nor does it provide the backup-restoring or target-install operations.

To support Blender version > 2.80, make one (not necessairly both) of these changes:

a. Add the decorator @addon_updater_ops.make_annotations before your addon’s user preferences class (see here)

Add the draw call to any according panel to indicate there is an update by adding this line to the end of the panel or window: addon_updater_ops.update_notice_box_ui()

Minimal example setup / use cases

If interested in implementing a purely customized UI implementation of this code, it is also possible to not use the included Operator File (addon_updater_ops.py). This section covers the typical steps required to accomplish the main tasks and what needs to be connected to an interface. This also exposes the underlying ideas implemented in the provided files.

Required settings Attributes to define before any other use case, to be defined in the registration of the addon

Check for update (foreground using background thread, i.e. after pressing an explicit «check for update button»)

Update to newest version available (Must have already checked for an update. This uses/blocks the main thread)

If utilizing updater.include_branches, you can grab the latest release tag by skipping the branches included (which appear first in the tags list)

addon_updater module settings

This section provides documentation for all of the addon_updater module settings available and required. These are the settings applied directly to the addon_updater module itself, imported into any other python file.

Example changing or applying a setting:

User preference defined (ie optional but good to expose to user)

Internal values (read only by the Python Module)

This is the code which acts as a bridge between the pure python addon_updater.py module and blender itself. It is safe and even advised to modify the Operator File to fit the UI/UX wishes. You should not need to modify the addon_updater.py file to make a customized updater experience.

User preferences UI

Most of the key settings for the user are available in the user preferences of the addon, including the ability to restore the addon, force check for an update now, and allowing the user to immediately check for an update (still runs in the background)

This is an alternate, more condensed preferences UI example which removes more granular options such as settings for the intervals between update checks, restoring from backups, and targeting versions to install