Designs for the OS Upgrade & Recovery
The new settings page "OS Upgrade & Recovery" should enable users to easily access the major system upgrades and recovery-related features in one place inside the OS. There are three major actions a user can perform.
- OS Upgrade allows users to upgrade the OS to the latest version available.
- OS Recovery includes:
- Recovery Partition Update allows users to update the recovery partition when there is a major update available.
- Refresh OS Install allows users to reinstall the OS while retaining user accounts and files.
A user should always have the ability to upgrade the OS to the latest version. The designs below show the screen when the OS Upgrade is available. Users on LTS-version might prefer to wait with upgrading the OS. The system notifies the users about the upgrade once a week but those notifications might become annoying over time. A user can dismiss notifications on the same page in Settings until next release.The notifications will resume when the next upgrade is available. The two designs below show two different states of the button to dismiss notifications.
The recovery partition enables users to restore the system to factory settings in the event of system issues. It is therefore important to keep the recovery partition up to date. When there is a recovery partition update available, the system shows a standard notification. Once a user clicks on notification, one is taken to the OS Upgrade & Recovery page in the Settings.
The updates for the recovery partition appear in the first row in the OS Recovery section. When there is no update available, the system notifies a user that one has the most current version.
The recovery partition update only shows when there is a major update to the recovery partition. If a user chooses to upgrade the OS, the recovery partition should update along with the OS.
Sometimes a user might have the recovery partition version that doesn't support Refresh OS option. In this instance the recovery partition update is required to enable Refresh OS.
Designs below show where the Recovery Partition Update should appear and what the process for updating it should look like.
A user should be able to Refresh OS with the ability to retain user files and accounts.
As mentioned above, sometimes the recovery partition update is required to enable Refresh OS.
Designs below show the step by step process of updating the recovery partition in order to enable Refresh OS option and then choosing to Refresh OS.
The following screen shows the page when everything is up to date.
The flowchart might be helpful to understand what should appear on the page under different circumstances when the recovery partition update is available. If there is no update available, the system shows that a user has the most current version of the recovery partition.
