How to update Alcove on your Mac

1. Let Alcove update itself. Open Alcove. It checks for new versions on its own, and if it has not offered one yet, look in the Alcove menu, or under Help or its preferences, for Check for Updates, then let it download and relaunch.
2. Upgrade the Homebrew cask. If you installed Alcove with Homebrew, open Terminal and run brew upgrade --cask alcove. Homebrew downloads the current build and replaces the app in your Applications folder.
3. Or download it from tryalcove.com. Otherwise get the current build from tryalcove.com, which is the same download Homebrew points at. Quit Alcove, open the download and put the new Alcove in Applications in place of the old one: a disk image is dragged across, an installer package runs its own steps. Your settings and documents live outside the app and are kept.

brew upgrade --cask alcove

That is one app. The same walk, through a different menu or page each time, is what every other app on the Mac asks of you, which is where Floodtide comes in.

Floodtide reads the same Homebrew record for Alcove that the brew command above does, without needing Homebrew installed, to learn which version is current. When yours is behind, the row appears under Updates with the version it will move to and the download size. Pressing Update, or Update All, does the rest:

• The vendor's own build is downloaded, several apps at a time, with real progress.
• The download is verified against the developer signature of the installed copy; Gatekeeper must accept it before anything is replaced.
• Alcove is asked to quit politely if it is open, and never forced.
• The bundle is swapped and the old version kept for seven days, so Undo Last Update always works.
• The replacement's code signature is checked; a build signed worse than the one you had is rolled back automatically.

Alcove's publisher does not publish a checksum, so Floodtide verifies each download by requiring the same developer signature as the copy already installed, and Gatekeeper has to accept it before anything is replaced.

If Alcove lives in a folder macOS protects, the swap asks for your administrator password once for the whole batch, exactly as the Finder does when you install anything by hand.