The post i placed was closed without me respospding.
It appears that a app downloaded from flatpak can update itself indenpendant of flatpak update. The post I made appears to have two people conflicting with the answer.
Can any flatpak app update itself independent of flatpak ?
I have had the Brave webbroser have an update icon appear in the top corner.
The answer is a bit complex.
First, the files of a Flatpak are mounted immutable when the app is run. An app cannot modify these files itself and needs to use Flatpak to update these.
However, an app does have the opportunity to place files into its own data folder, located under ~/.var/app/$APP_ID (so ~/.var/app/com.brave.Browser for Brave for example).
Some apps use this to install and update software. A prominent example of this would be Steam, which can install and update games installed to this folder, or other folders it was given access to.
That being said:
Not many apps use the latter option, and I wouldn’t assume Brave does either.
As a final thought: Apps can be notified by Flatpak if an update is available, while they are running. Also not a system many apps use, but as a browser, it might be that Brave is using this to check for an update and notify when it is running.
Might be best though to ask the Brave developers about that.
it was answered. you just didn’t like the answer.