Every Update Should Need My Approval

I now dread software updates.

In the piece, Living Software, Jack Cheng (@jackcheng/@every) said something that’s been rattling around my head:

Lately, I’ve been wishing that more software had a “freeze” button. When pressed, the product would crystalize in its present state. The feature set would lock, and the interface would solidify, as if dipped in carbonite. There would be no more new updates. No changes whatsoever. I want this button because companies are loading apps with more and more features, whether AI or the result of AI-accelerated development, making the tools unrecognizable.

The freeze button. He’s naming a feeling I’ve had for a while.

The apps I rely on keep getting worse.

Not more buggy, though that happens too. Worse in the sense that the tool I learned three years ago is no longer the tool I open today. Notion added Email, AI, then agents. Gmail grew a Gemini panel. Slack stacked on summaries, huddles, lists, canvases. I use almost none of these.

Every release-notes email reads like a land grab. Someone’s roadmap needed a shipped feature, so here it is, living in my sidebar forever.

What I actually want is closer to a pull request. In software development, a pull request is how a change gets proposed. One engineer writes new code and opens a PR. Teammates review it, leave comments, and either merge it in or send it back. The review is the point. Nothing ships until someone says yes.

Apply that shape to the apps we use everyday. A new feature gets built, and before it shows up in my interface, I see it the way a reviewer would. Here’s what changed. Here’s why. Here’s what it touches. I accept the parts that help me and decline the rest.

The company still ships at whatever pace it wants. I get to be the reviewer on my own tools.

When anyone can build anything, maybe the key unlock for the best products will be giving control back to users.