If Ubuntu 26.04 LTS hasn’t nagged you about pending updates in a while, there’s a reason for that.
A Launchpad bug report and related discussion on the Ubuntu Discourse noticed that the distro’s update-manager no longer notifies when updates are pending unless the update notification tray icon is enabled.
The rub? That tray icon as turned off in Ubuntu 26.04 (with no toggle in Settings to turn it back on).
Update: A day after publishing this, Ubuntu released a security update to ensure Software Updater (aka update-notifier) tells users if non-security updates are available. The tray icon is off and while it can be manually enabled doing so is no longer needed for update notifications to appear. (h/t Link)
It’s not as “risky” as it sounds, though.
Ubuntu ships with unattended-upgrades enabled by default, which installs security updates in the background – you’re just not told about them. Turn them off, though, and it gets icky: the bug report notes you’ll never be notified of any updates via the desktop at all.
That is a bug in my opinion, but a sterling reminder of why good system hygiene (checking for updates yourself) is important, irrespective of default settings.
The Software Updater used to pop-open periodically if updates were available, but many folks (myself included) found it annoying because the window often stole focus. Ubuntu 25.10 fixed it by adding a desktop notification and tray icon to quietly notify of updates.
But that tray icon got turned off (by default) in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. Canonical’s Marco Trevisan said this “was a design choice” that people can argue about, but noted the tray icon can be manually re-enabled via gsettings.
To be clear: Ubuntu 26.04 automatically installs security updates, and you can install the rest manually: run Software Updater or apt upgrade, or look in App Center (it gained the ability to upgrade some Deb software alongside Snaps in 26.04).
But long-time Ubuntu users accustomed to a nudge about available updates may have found the sudden dearth of any notification at all unusual (or a relief; no-one likes a na).
Enabling the missing icon for yourself is as easy as opening your terminal to run gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-notifier show-updates-status-icon true (as stated, no toggle for it in Settings).
You can also edit the value using the GUI dconf-editor tool, but it is easy to accidentally change a setting you didn’t intend to in there, especially when using a mouse scroll wheel to traverse a page (talking from experience).
Ubuntu 26.04 dropped the Software & Updates tool from new installs to make system management less esoteric. That tool can still be installed from the repos, so if you want greater control over when, how or if updates are installed, worth grabbing it.