Abstract: Disclosed are methods for keeping an application up-to-date that identify the application and the application user's specific needs to apply just the updates the user needs when the user needs them. Based on particulars of the user's computing environment, an update policy is implemented that specifies certain “triggering events” for each application to be kept up-to-date. When a triggering event occurs, the application associated with the triggering event is identified. A list is compiled of the updates already applied to the application. Another list is compiled, possibly at a remote update server, of all the updates available for the application. The lists are compared, and if an available but not yet applied update is found, then that update is sent to the user. To identify an application associated with a triggering event, the update server correlates information collected from the user's computing environment with the server's database of available updates.