5 Fresh Ways to Say Update in Spanish

If you’re an intermediate Spanish learner, you might be looking into expanding your vocabulary. Today, we bring you the word “update”, which you might find useful for many situations.

In English, we use “update” to talk about a lot of things: we can “update” an operating system, we can “update” information, and we even can “give an update” to a friend about our life! But… how do we say update in Spanish?

In this article, we’re going to learn some different ways to say update in Spanish; plus, we will feed you with a few Spanish example dialogues, so you can see the word in action. ¿Listo?

All the Ways to Say Update in Spanish

Here’s a summary of all the ways to say “Update” in Spanish. Below you can find more explanations and sample sentences.

There are a few other ways in which you might translate “update” in Spanish below.

Update in Spanish as a verb

In English, “update” works both as a verb and as a noun. Let’s start with the verb “to update” and its Spanish equivalent.

Actualizar

In Spanish, the most comment translation for this verb is actualizar. Let’s see more about it in detail below.

The bad news is Actualizar is an irregular Spanish verb; which means its root changes for some conjugations. But worry not! The reason why it’s irregular is pretty straightforward and it’s not a hard verb to use.

Despite it being an irregular verb, we could say actualizar is pretty easy to conjugate. In the table below, you will find the verb actualizar conjugated in the present tense of the indicative mood.

So, where is the irregularity? As we said before, actualizar is an irregular verb. But we can only see this in some of its conjugations, where we will have to replace the “z” with a “c” (because, as you may know, you can’t put a “z” before an “e” or an “i” in Spanish).

For example, it happens with the present tense of the subjunctive mood, with conjugations such as actualice or actualicemos.

Now, let’s see some examples with the verb actualizar in action.

Poner(se) al día

In English, we use the phrase “to bring up to date” pretty much as a synonym for “to update”. The way to say this in Spanish is poner al día.

This verb has also a reflexive form: ponerse al día, which can normally be translated as “to catch up”.

It being a reflexive verb means that the action falls on the speaker; in other words, it must always be accompanied by a reflexive pronoun: me, te, se, nos, os. Let’s see some examples:

Mantener al corriente

Finally, one way of saying “update” in English is to ask someone to update you or to keep you updated (which you might also express as to “keep someone / me posted”). For this phrase, you’d use mantener al corriente.

A more colloquial version of this is “mantener al tanto”, kind of like “keep me in the loop” or “keep me posted”.

Update in Spanish as a noun

“Update” is not just a verb; it can also work as a noun. In Spanish, the translation for “update” is actualización, which is, basically, the action and effect of actualizar (“updating”). For example:

Other ways to say update in Spanish

Other words and expressions that are useful to talk about an update in Spanish are: