Why does the Nextcloud Windows client require a restart each update?

I’ve also got Seafile, Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive on my PC and none of them require closing Windows Explorer but then also a restart. What’s different about the Nextcloud client?

They said it normally isn’t required when you use the MSI installer:

However there are still reports that there are issues with the update:

Since this is recent and some versions it was messed up, it is important to check which version you have and which installation source you use, before reporting issues.

It’s happened for my client and me on every single update for the year or so they’ve been running Nextcloud. On every computer AFAIK. Mine own PC has gone from W10 to W11 (clean install) and still does it. Good to see that it’s reported.

This is getting a bit annoying now esp. as there have been several new clients releases over the past few months. Now it’s great that they’re fixing bugs but this restart of Explorer and then the complete computer is really OTT. I recently rebuilt my PC with the MSI installer. Same problem.

I had the problem as well (if I don’t restart, it kills explorer.exe, desktop and explorer disappear, you can restart somehow via task manager, but in the end you have to restart. It won’t force you immediately, but not a good experience either).

I now wait for Windows update day, then I have to do a restart, I update the NC client as well and restart again.

I’ve just had another prompt to update, one assumes to v3.8.1 - and I wasn’t asked to reboot!

Indeed very annoying! Why? Other syncApplications like Dropbox and GoogleDrive don’t need a system reboot. Why does Nextcloud (which I started using because it’s less spammy) now suddenly need a system restart?

Suddenly? It’s always done it for us on all Windows computers.

There seems an bug report that is still open:

You can give it a thumbs up on the original post to show that you are affected as well. Just write a new comment if you have data/information to share about this bug.

If you have a more specific case (like this one: [Bug]: UPDATE requires a REBOOT because stuck by Notepad/Firefox/Windows EXPLORER · Issue #5251 · nextcloud/desktop · GitHub), it can be better to have a dedicated issue for that.