Do I need to manually run the 1.8.4 installer on top of my existing 1.8.4 app?

What I’m trying to do

I am trying to decide if the popup message which Obsidian Desktop shows me is valid. The popup says something like, Obsidian version 1.8.4 has certain new features which require you to download and manually run an installer. However, my Obsidian Desktop just now did an in-app update, and it currently shows version 1.8.4 already.

Are there two different 1.8.4 versions, one resulting from an in-app update, and the other resulting from manually running a downloaded installer? Or is 1.8.4 is 1.8.4 is 1.8.4?

I am interested in an immediate answer for my situation: do I need to manually run the 1.8.4 installer on top of my existing 1.8.4 app? And I am also interested in a general answer: how does one know for sure that it is necessary to manually run a downloaded installer on an existing installation, once one has dismissed that dialogue box which appeared when Obsidian Desktop launched?

Things I have tried

Occasionally, Obsidian release notes will indicate that a manual installer update is required, and include a link to our website. These updates address the scaffolding of Obsidian, and cannot be handled within the automatic update process.

  • The Obsidian release notes for Desktop version 1.8.4 do not mention that a manual installer update is required.

  • The About Obsidian dialogue reads, “Version 1.8.4 (Installer 1.4.16)”. It does not clearly tell me whether or not this is equivalent to a manually installed version 1.8.4.

  • I dismissed the popup message which Obsidian Desktop showed me when it launched. I do not know how to read its contents again.

I am using the Obsidian Desktop app on a macOS computer which was just upgraded to macOS Sonoma 14.7.3.

Looking through the logs, 1.6.5 (released on 25 June 2024) was the last time regular users were told the installer needed to be updated, so your 1.4.16 installer has been out of date since June last year. A full installation is needed for compliant functionality.

If you go to About Obsidian, you’ll see a line like: Version 1.7.7 (Installer 1.7.7). This refers to the installer version when you last installed Obsidian, and the actual version of Obsidian as the first number.

If you only auto update within Obsidian, you’ll only update the main version of Obsidian, not the installer version. Therefore every now and then, with major changes, there comes a warning that you’ll need to install Obsidian to update the installer version of Obsidian.

Note that your vaults will not be affected by you re-installing Obsidian on top of an older installer version.