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Version Updates

MCPProxy includes built-in update checking to help you stay current with the latest features and security fixes.

How It Works

MCPProxy automatically checks for new versions by querying GitHub Releases:

  1. Background checking: The core server checks for updates on startup and every 4 hours thereafter
  2. Non-blocking: Update checks run in the background and don't affect proxy performance
  3. Graceful degradation: If the check fails (e.g., no internet), MCPProxy continues working normally

Where Updates Are Displayed

System Tray

When an update is available, a new menu item appears in the tray menu:

  • "New version available (vX.Y.Z)" - Click to open the GitHub releases page
  • For Homebrew users: "Update available: vX.Y.Z (use brew upgrade)"

The menu item only appears when an update is detected - no menu clutter when you're up to date.

Web Control Panel

The sidebar displays the current version at the bottom. When an update is available:

  • A small "update available" badge appears next to the version
  • Click to view the release notes

CLI Doctor Command

The mcpproxy doctor command shows version information:

$ mcpproxy doctor
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔍 MCPProxy Health Check
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Version: v1.2.3 (update available: v1.3.0)
Download: https://github.com/smart-mcp-proxy/mcpproxy-go/releases/tag/v1.3.0

✅ All systems operational! No issues detected.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Configuration

Environment Variables

VariableDescriptionDefault
MCPPROXY_DISABLE_AUTO_UPDATEDisable background update checks entirelyfalse
MCPPROXY_ALLOW_PRERELEASE_UPDATESInclude prerelease/beta versions in update checksfalse

Examples

# Disable update checking
MCPPROXY_DISABLE_AUTO_UPDATE=true mcpproxy serve

# Enable prerelease updates (for beta testers)
MCPPROXY_ALLOW_PRERELEASE_UPDATES=true mcpproxy serve

API Endpoint

Update information is available via the REST API:

curl -H "X-API-Key: your-key" http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/v1/info

Response includes an update field when version information is available:

{
"success": true,
"data": {
"version": "v1.2.3",
"update": {
"available": true,
"latest_version": "v1.3.0",
"release_url": "https://github.com/smart-mcp-proxy/mcpproxy-go/releases/tag/v1.3.0",
"checked_at": "2025-01-15T10:30:00Z",
"is_prerelease": false
}
}
}

See REST API Documentation for complete details.

Updating MCPProxy

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew upgrade mcpproxy

Manual Download

  1. Click the update notification in the tray menu or web UI
  2. Download the appropriate binary for your platform
  3. Replace the existing binary and restart MCPProxy

Windows Installer

Download the latest .msi installer from GitHub Releases and run it. The installer will upgrade your existing installation.

Development Builds

When running a development build (version shows as "development"), update checking is automatically disabled since there's no meaningful version to compare against.

Troubleshooting

Update check not working

  1. Ensure you have internet connectivity
  2. Check if MCPPROXY_DISABLE_AUTO_UPDATE is set
  3. Run mcpproxy doctor to see current version status
  4. Check logs for any GitHub API errors:
    tail -f ~/.mcpproxy/logs/main.log | grep -i update

Prerelease not showing

By default, prerelease versions are excluded. To enable:

export MCPPROXY_ALLOW_PRERELEASE_UPDATES=true

Behind corporate firewall

MCPProxy checks updates via https://api.github.com. Ensure this domain is accessible from your network.