Most definitely - it’s mentioned in the Update thread, and your guarantee is effectively void (no refunds) if you ignore them 
Not sure about your setup, but I get a window telling me when I have pacnews, and I always deal with them at that time - so that it won’t be skipped and forgotten.
However, if you are worried, just run pacnew-checker.
Thank you very much!
sudo pacman -S manjaro-pacnew-checker
I installed it:
sudo pacman -S manjaro-pacnew-checker ✔
[sudo] password for gideon:
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
Packages (2) meld-3.22.3-2 manjaro-pacnew-checker-0.7.2-1
Total Download Size: 0.93 MiB
Total Installed Size: 5.22 MiB
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
:: Retrieving packages...
manjaro-pacnew-checker-0.7.2-1-any 87.8 KiB 142 KiB/s 00:01 [#############################################################################] 100%
meld-3.22.3-2-any 860.3 KiB 1057 KiB/s 00:01 [#############################################################################] 100%
Total (2/2) 948.2 KiB 1073 KiB/s 00:01 [#############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking keys in keyring [#############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking package integrity [#############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) loading package files [#############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking for file conflicts [#############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking available disk space [#############################################################################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/2) installing meld [#############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) installing manjaro-pacnew-checker [#############################################################################] 100%
warning: directory permissions differ on /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/
filesystem: 750 package: 755
Enable pacnew-checker daemon service at boot: Reboot needed
Created symlink '/etc/systemd/user/default.target.wants/pacnew-checker.path' → '/usr/lib/systemd/user/pacnew-checker.path'.
Optional dependencies for manjaro-pacnew-checker
kio-admin: Manage files as administrator using the admin:// KIO protocol for Plasma
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/6) Reloading user manager configuration...
(2/6) Updating the MIME type database...
(3/6) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
(4/6) Compiling GSettings XML schema files...
(5/6) Updating icon theme caches...
(6/6) Updating the desktop file MIME type cache...
And when I run pacnew-checker I don’t get any output. Does that mean that there aren’t any new .pacnew files to deal with?
And will this also give me a graphical notifications about pacnews as said in the guide?
Yes. It will also run automatically when needed.
Thank you!
That likely means you didn’t read the output:
However, you seem to have another issue related to polkit:
You will find a possible cure for that in a recent Update Announcement under the Known Issues and Solutions section. See problems with polkit.
However, this one command will likely fix permissions of the directory mentioned:
sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/polkit-1/rules.d/
And this for any rules files that exist inside the directory:
sudo chmod 644 /usr/lib/polkit-1/rules.d/*
When I run sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib/polkit-1/rules.d/ I got this output:
chmod: cannot access '/usr/lib/polkit-1/rules.d/': No such file or directory
and for the second command I get this:
sudo chmod 644 /usr/lib/polkit-1/rules.d/* 1 ✘ 5s
zsh: no matches found: /usr/lib/polkit-1/rules.d/*
It also seems like there are still video card related issues: when watching YouTube videos and choosing the audio device to be the monitor there isn’t any sound, but there is one on the headphones (which are connected to an external DAC), although earlier it stopped but then it now happen again. And there’s also a weird issue that after the computer goes to sleep, when logging in again a few seconds afterwards the computer goes to sleep again, sometimes this happen twice until we’re able to login without the computer going to sleep again.
❯ lsd --tree --depth 2 /usr/lib/polkit-1
polkit-1
├── polkit-agent-helper-1
├── polkitd
└── rules.d
└─ 99-mbn.rules
~
❯ lsd -l /usr/lib/polkit-1/
Name Size Date Modified User Group Permissions Links
polkit-agent-helper-1 18 KB 2025-12-28 @ 19:12:35 root root .rwxr-xr-x 1
polkitd 126 KB 2025-12-28 @ 19:12:35 root root .rwxr-xr-x 1
rules.d 4.0 KB 2026-01-18 @ 22:30:40 root root drwxr-xr-x 2
It’s alright. It simply means you don’t have anything in /usr/lib/polkit-1/rules.d/. Neither do I, but some people may have added custom rules there.
But… 
… if the problem with authentication persists, then there are two things you can do — you don’t have to do both at the same time…
Use a newer kernel than 6.1. Recommended is 6.12 or later.
Restore the SUID bit on /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkit-agent-helper-1. With a 6.12 kernel or later, this is not needed — and not desired either — but if you’re running an earlier LTS kernel, then you still need it.
sudo chmod 4755 /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkit-agent-helper-1
That’s not a video issue, that’s a sound issue, and it deserves its own thread in the Support > Audio category. Furthermore, sound over HDMI is often problematic.
That’s yet another issue altogether, warranting yet another thread.
We try keeping the issues separate here — one thread per issue per member. That makes it easier to follow up on and/or refer back to.
The reason I brought both of these I issues as possibly related to the graphics card is because a graphics issue is what lead me to discover the problems with the updates as I described in the first message of this thread. I suspect that maybe we don’t have recent Nvidia drivers and this may lead to all these issues. Now as for the first solution to the polkit issue you suggested (installing a newer kernel) how can I do it?
sudo mhwd-kernel -i linux612
… or…
sudo pacman -S linux612 && sudo mkinitcpio -P && sudo update-grub
Note that you can also use the manjaro-settings-manager for installing a new kernel, if you prefer to do it via a GUI.
If you are using an Nvidia GPU, then I would recommend doing it with the GUI or with mhwd, as they would then also take care of installing the appropriate Nvidia driver.
I used manjaro-settings-manager as you suggested and I already had a 6.12 version of the kernel, but I installed a slightly newer 6.12 version just to see if that might help and I also checked from this application that I have the latest proprietary drivers for the nvidia card and indeed I do. So, I rebooted and tried again, but still got
sudo chmod 644 /usr/lib/polkit-1/rules.d/* 1 ✘ 5s
zsh: no matches found: /usr/lib/polkit-1/rules.d/*
I also still don’t get any output after running pacnew-checker .
But there’s no point in doing that. You don’t have any files in there, so why are you even running that command? 
Not sure if it is meant to be run manually, since i do not use it.
You can always manually check for pacnews with pacdiff -s or if you want a nice gui you install Meld and then it will be DIFFPROG=meld pacdiff -s
How’d you do that?
There’s only one normal version (6.12.73-1) and one real-time version (6.12.66_rt15-1). The latter is an older version and is generally not recommended because it’s real-ttime, which can cause issues.
What do you have installed?
mhwd-kernel -li
# might be better with pacman
# as it'll show the complete version numbers
pacman -Qs "linux[0-9]{2,3}"
EDIT:
Added pacman command.
I thought you were saying that this output is a problem when you said that:
… if the problem with authentication persists, then there are two things you can do — you don’t have to do both at the same time…
Yes, and those two things do not include the command that yielded that error.
sudo chmod 4755 /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkit-agent-helper-1
… is a different command to the one you executed.
This is the pacman output I get:
pacman -Qs "linux[0-9]{2,3}" ✔
local/linux515 5.15.200-1
The Linux515 kernel and modules
local/linux515-nvidia-open 590.48.01-5 (linux515-extramodules)
NVIDIA open kernel modules for linux515
local/linux612 6.12.73-1
The Linux 6.12 kernel and modules
local/linux612-nvidia-open 590.48.01-12 (linux612-extramodules)
NVIDIA open kernel modules for linux612
local/linux612-rt 6.12.66_rt15-1
The Linux612-rt kernel and modules
local/linux612-rt-nvidia-open 590.48.01-3 (linux612-rt-extramodules)
NVIDIA open kernel modules for linux612-rt