A better update system is needed had this happen to me after came back from long break, thought it was catching me up on updates, but it just never ended, just removed local content see what happens next.
This is happening to me too. I thought maybe it could be because I moved the content folders in my project, but it’s affecting other items as well. Funnily, it’s also telling me that the engine itself (5.7.2) has an update, despite there being no option to perform an update.
UE 5.7.2 being reported as ready to update is correct, since the latest version available is 5.7.4.
Were you running 5.7.2 at that time? If so, just close the engine and it should properly allow you to update it. Just make sure there is no child process of UnrealEditor.exe running in the background.
Oh, thank you for pointing this out. I’ve queued up the update now.
The thing is, I actually can’t find any information about what the current latest version of the engine is anywhere on the internet(??). The “Release Notes” link in the launcher just brings me to a page about UE 5.0. 
This has started to happen to me as well. The whole UE launcher (not to mention FAB) experience has become super frustrating. I have multiple items in my library showing the orange dot and when I select update it just verifies and the dot goes away. Comes back when I relaunch. Makes it hard to know what genuinely needs updating or not.
Getting fed up with Epic and their atrocious user experiences. The orange dot in itself is a poor UX decision for indicating an update is required. It’s super hard to see the orange dots when you are scrolling through 1000 assets that you can’t categorize or sort in any meaningful way. Why not color the whole item bright orange so you can actually spot them? Or add a toggle that auto hides everything else.
Sorry for the frustration.. I’m just tired boss. Epic just wears you out with a thousands cuts.
Welp, today the launcher had an update! The release notes don’t specifically identify the issue in this thread, but I saw “Bug fixes” and was hopeful! But no. After updating the launcher, I restarted my PC and the issue…persists. My last communication from the Fab team after I asked for an update was, “The development team is actively looking into this issue. We can not give you an ETA at this time.” That was a week ago. FYI
Same here, same infinite update problem that’s been going on for a month. The only thing this fix changed for me is that the launcher no longer crashes on startup.
Also, pay attention to the storage space containing your vault. Because when I tried to update about a hundred assets, it didn’t overwrite the files but duplicated them!
This quickly filled up my SSD, which had over 90 GB of free space! So, if this happens to you, remember to delete the local content of the problematic assets in the launcher.
Back with a further update on this one; the plot thickens.
I’ve recently moved some of my UE projects over to a second computer (one that I haven’t used in a few months). This means that some of the plugins I had been using on my primary machine are out of date on this machine.
When I start any of my projects at least one of the plugins warns me that it is out of date and that I should update it via the launcher. When I try to do this the same error is now occurring within the launcher on the second computer too (further evidence it’s likely related to having a larger library).
Furthermore another symptom of this problem seems to be that out of date packs/plugins are not detected in the launcher (at least not consistently). So it could be the case that many of the plugins we have installed are actually out of date and we’re not being notified. Therefore the update notifications we are seeing are probably being misallocated to plugins that don’t require an update.
So maybe the issue is somehow related to a mismatch of references (hashes / SKUs or whatever epic are using) that occurs when the table of plugins populates upon starting the launcher. Just a guess.
Edit: I should add that this basically stymies my update path as, though I can install never versions of the engine going forward, I now cannot install the latest versions of any plugins that are suited for the new engine version. I’m now stuck at 5.7.4 with the current plugins I have, and only on one machine - I can’t go backwards or forwards. So this issue has gone from somewhat of an irritation to a major blocker.
huh, no wonder why i haven’t gotten any plugin updates recently.
edit: basically, if anyone has this bug, the launcher and unreal engine is fully broken, when the user’s vault gets too big.
THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED NOW
bump - this is still happening.
yeah, the recent update wasn’t for this (according to the Trello notes)
another (possibly related) symptom. once and a while i get the pop up “projects are not associated”, either after everything loads in after starting up the launcher, or when clicking “installed plugins”. i wonder if it’s related to certain file permissions or Windows itself.
Not only do I have that same problem, I also have downloads who appears in the launcher but never appears in the download section itself. The thing just refuse to download anything new for whatever reason it does 
. Is the launcher such a burden to epic? Can’t they at least get us a system like blender’s which we could use when they just break everything down? T-T. And the launcher isn’t even capable to be in agreement with its own actions:
Does it or doesn’t actually download anything? It doesn’t know itself -_-.
Bump!
Please, Epic, this problem has persisted for two months now. 
I’ve also found that I can’t update plugins that actually do have updates.
It seems like there are now further compounding symptoms with this bug.
I’m now unable to see which plugins are installed to the engine (there is supposed to be a dozen or so plugins installed to my version of 5.7.4). The plugins remain functional in the engine, but are now not displayed at all in the ‘installed plugins’ popup in the launcher (the Fab plugin and Quixel Bridge seem to remain though).
I’ve tried reinstalling the plugins, at which point they display here for a while. But then on restart of the launcher they’re gone again.
I hope this doesn’t indicate an increasing corruption of Fab’s database.
Make sure you screengrab all of the plugins / packs you’ve purchased over the years. You may wake up to find they’ve been permanently deleted from your Fab account. Just a precaution.
yeah, this just reeks of DB or hard drive/server corruption. it slowly gets worse over time.
i hope this is one reason why they’re completely rewriting the launcher
Sounds like an Epic Launcher sync/cache bug. Try clearing the Epic launcher cache (%localappdata%\EpicGamesLauncher\Saved\webcache) and restart it. If it keeps happening, verify the packs and make sure Epic has write permissions to the install location. If it’s only the orange dot returning but no files are actually downloading, the content is probably already updated.
wait, they finally get rid of this slow and buggy launcher? what a good news.
i couldnt remember that the launcher could tell me the already installed plugins…
best thing is when the vault will always get reloaded when you start or restart the launcher. then you can wait till it loaded every asset from the chached vault, meanwhile you cant apply any filter, cause newly added items (still loading…) are always added regardless of filter applied.
oh and dont click on an vault item with left mouse button by accident - i always use middle mouse button for fast browser access. when he redirect you to the …fab - tab… uhm ya… then there is a really nice to look black window. always about 15-30 seconds till he loads the fab page… could be cloudfare in germany, there are peering problems from time to time, thanks to my isp at this point.
epic launcher cache clearing doesnt help with any of that.
Thanks for the input, however, deleting the webcache and giving the app write access (or running as administrator) does not fix the issue.
Can anyone else confirm any work arounds?