In the add-ons list, there could be an option to select add-ons to automatically update before startup, avoiding having to confirm an update and relaunching Anki.
There would of course be a warning to only enable automatically updating trusted add-ons. Also, there would be a button to automatically update from now on when a user is about to install an add-on for the first time or sees an update prompt on startup.
Extra feature: Since some users won’t restart Anki very often, an option to check for updates every hour, install, and reload the add-ons if Anki has been idle might be implementable.
This would be a pretty small “improvement” and wouldn’t save a lot of time, but I’d like to hear what other people think.
Technically it is possible to load add-ons while Anki is running, but it is more likely to cause unexpected problems. e.g.
Codes that are run only when Anki is started are not loaded
Duplicate codes and values.
It may be possible to develop an add-on that auto updates itself. e.g.
The add-on will remove all codes by itself before reloading.
When it reloads, it runs the required code.
In my case I don’t update add-ons as soon as they are released because new features may cause bugs (Add-ons doesn’t have a beta version like Anki for desktop or AnkiDroid) or other new features may be added soon(e.g. the author forgot to include some new code), so I think it will work stably after one or two weeks from the release.
I shouldn’t mind being alerted to an updated add-on being available, but I doubt I’d want an automatic update. Some of the add-ons may not be as stable as you would expect, or as well written as you would like; I’d rather have full control over the update process.