Sparkle (software)
Software framework for macOS
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sparkle is an open-source software framework for macOS designed to simplify updating software for the end user of a program. Sparkle's primary means of distributing updates is through "appcasting," a term coined for the practice of using an RSS enclosure to distribute updates and release notes.
| Sparkle | |
|---|---|
| |
 Sparkle's Test App showing a software update window | |
| Original author | Andy Matuschak |
| Developer | Sparkle Project (2014–present) |
| Initial release | January 9, 2006 |
| Stable release | 2.6.0
/ March 15, 2024 |
| Written in | Objective-C, Swift |
| Operating system | macOS |
| Type | Software update |
| License | MIT License |
| Website | sparkle-project |
| Repository | |
History
Sparkle 0.1 (beta) was released in January 2006 by Andy Matuschak to provide apps "instant self-update" functionality, which very few applications had at the time.[1]
In August 2009, Sparkle added support for delta updates for installing smaller and faster incremental updates. This was first used to update WebKit's nightly builds.[2]
In 2016, Radek discovered a man-in-the-middle attack vulnerability in applications that use Sparkle to receive updates through an unencrypted channel.[3]
