You can do that with a boarding pass downloaded from the airline website or emailed to you by the airline. But some airlines like to hide this option in order to force you to download their app.

How can you remotely update a PDF file after someone downloaded it?

Why would you need to do that? The boarding pass has a QR code on it; the QR code links to your ticket. If you need to change your booking, they can email you a new one.

They are referring to gate and time changes

And? These are available on google, on the airline's website, and on screens throughout the terminal. Many airlines will send them to you via SMS. There's no need to have a whole app just to check your gate assignment.

Or I could just use an app and get a push notification.

If you have a half gig spare for such an app these days maybe

I can't remember the last time I received a gate change notification via SMS. App push notifications are more common in my experience.

Some airlines email you a hyperlink that put passes in your Apple wallet from a website. This seems like the ideal case to me.

did you simply ignore what the parent poster wrote about it updating itself with gate numbers etc.?

My apple wallet boarding passes never update on time. At LAX they sometimes put you as a placeholder at the international terminal for your gate on boarding pass. So then you show up, slog through the international terminal to this gate, and see that no you are actually in terminal 7. Enjoy the resulting 2.5 mile walk I hope you baked in extra time.

Now I don’t trust it. Googling the flight number brings in the updated gate. Not the apple wallet boarding pass though.

Are you not also paying attention to the gate itself and to departure boards? Why do you need your phone to tell you what's posted on numerous displays that you walk past?

> Are you not also paying attention to the […] departure boards?

I’m not, not anymore.

> Why do you need your phone to tell you what's posted on numerous displays that you walk past?

Convenience.

So you disregard what's in front of your face, in preference to your device.

Other folks here were talking about how their devices did not update in a timely fashion. They had to force refresh several times to get a response. Meanwhile the gate screens have a single job and update within seconds.

Like following the GPS instructions onto a logging road, or into a lake.

no I dont waste my time with the screens anymore.

What all 10 seconds?