Changing system font size prompts all apps to be re-updated?

[coolbreeze78]

Strange thing I noticed. I like small text, so I changed from the standard 350% to 300%. Went to the store, and had 26 updates. This was yesterday.

While I do like the smaller, crisp font, the dialer numbers are very small, so I just re-set back to 350%. Went to the store and boom, there are, again, 26 updates.

What's with that? Do apps really install different versions depending on your font size? That seems pretty strange to me.

 

[erasure25]

I believe it does. Some apps will actually look different. At 300%, Messaging app will have a sidebar on the left to scroll through your other texts (at least I don't remember this feature at 350%). Also, there are two places to change text size. Under display will change app/text size. Under Ease of Access, you can change text size only under More Options.

 

[SwimSwim]

I believe it's installing different assets based on the screen size + the display scaling. After all, Universal Apps means that every app is running the same code, but there's really no point in having, say, a Lumia 920 download all the same display images and assets as a 27in 4k All-in-One, right? That'd just eat up more storage, bandwidth (When downloading) and otherwise slow things down.

iOS does this as well (Only loads the stuff you need, so your iPhone 6 doesn't load things exclusive to the iPad Pro, and vice-verse, or so your iPhone 5 doesn't bother with stuff that can only fit on a 6S Plus display), I personally think it's really clever. I believe Microsoft just stated that Continuum does this as well. Once you try to open an app via Continuum, your phone quickly calls out for a store update to get all the desktop-images and other assets it needs, then it just works automagically. That way, if you never use a certain app in Continuum (Or ever use Continuum at all, for that matter): Then you don't have potentially MBs if not GBs of useless app space being used up.