1000x this. Some of us use GOG precisely to get away from the Steam "social experience". In fact it's exactly that "Steam social experiences" that as a female gamer just caused me to stop playing multi-player & hide my profile altogether...

That stopped me as a male player as well :)
My girlfriend was more open to that whole thing.

But if you disabled that, wouldn't that also disable the easier return? I bet it would be like as if you had directly downloaded it. But if you had a game you might wish to return then you wouldn't disable time tracker? Like they know if you disabled it during gameplay, right?

No idea and i don't care. Time tracking is a No Go.

The two times where I had to return a game (out of : check my account), because I wanted to change to a different game edition without upgrade option, GOG was very forthcoming, even if I already downloaded the installers.

The simplest of all solutions is: Pick your games carefully

By "very forthcoming", you mean willing to accept the exchange?

Another point with returns besides time is to make sure you aren't keeping a copy to play?

GoG needs to stop all the bullshit and just become more Developer friendly. I keep seeing a trend of developers claiming GoG is hard to work with and it's one of the reasons a developer will release one game here but not a sequel. All those resources spent on Galaxy would've been better spent on developer accessibility/tools.

As a man, I have to admit I don't know how women play online games at all. So much of the multiplayer scene in games like CoD and Siege seem like the sort of emotionally stunted man-children who hang on Andrew Tate's every word, view acting like a disgusting sack of shit toward women as being "based," and don't know any means of communicating outside of slurs. I got my fill in the "golden age" of Xbox 360, and I'm content to never experience online multiplayer ever again.

Galaxy's point is for gamers that are super-casual and just want to download and install stuff in one clip. And it's easy for updating games, too. Gamers used to Steam, Origin, UPLAY, and other services - yeah, this is up their alley.

I remember in Witcher 2 days and before - it was a pain sometimes as you might have to re-download entire builds of the game for all BIN and EXE files needed, as sometimes even patches wouldn't work or say rebuilds were all that was available.

I love installers though too - easy to back-up and install offline. And you're done. Can always cut those to DVD, BR, CD, HDD, SSD, whatever. That method can't be beat, TBH.

Sometimes, it's really best just to re-download a final build of a game way later down the line when the game's really done w/ its DLC's run and patching run (especially if the dev's and/or pub's announce it), since integrity and patching for games constantly getting updated can be a royal pain-in-the-butt to get updated right the old-school installer way.

If you don't have any online friends that you play multiplayer games with, or you simply don't do multiplayer games, then the use of any version of GOG Galaxy is very much almost totally pointless. Almost everything done in GOG Galaxy can be done either in web browser, or in the games themselves with no need for GOG Galaxy.

GOG's abuse of Galaxy as a DRM that locks game content away, unless you have Galaxy and launch the game through Galaxy, is not something I can ever willingly and knowingly support. I abhor Steam for its turning full retail purchase and subsequent ownership of the copy of the games we bought, into merely paying fool refai for revokable permission to access what we paid for. GOG abusing Galaxy as DRM to lock game content away unless I use GOG Galaxy, is turning GOG into a clone of Steam.

As for the GOG Galaxy 2.x (so-called) beta, I gave up on that and reinstalled the far superior 1.2

If you don't want to use the integrations at all. Delete or rename your storage folder in programdata and restart Galaxy. Galaxy will reimport your GOG games only and you will get rid of every game from other stores in Galaxy. Yes and no. Sometimes devs set their achievements accidentally to devmode. In that case they are in fact invisible and you won't be able to see them in Galaxy as well. When it comes to unlocking them you will only see this in game if the game also supports overlay - which is not the case for every game. So in the end it is true that is is possible that you won't be able to see achievements in Galaxy - but it depoends on the game.

Examples pls.

There have been some devs who claim that they were unable to upload a patch.
At least one other claimed that they 'sent' the patch to GOG, but it was never released.

However ... through the Galaxy API (Galaxy is not just the game client, but the whole eco system) publishers and developers can register and upload their patches, which would then update the repository files and create offline installer files. There would still be some sort of quality check before the files get published, but the devs can upload patches themselbes and many seem to be able to. Just a few black sheeps blame GOG for making it too complicated.

https://docs.gog.com/updates/

Not true at all. It is ten times more convenient than the website as a method to organize and download your offline installers and extras, even if you have no interest in the social aspects. The website is archaic by comparison.

this, I like Galaxy because the ease of use and can download everything in one go

Archaic? Yes, it may seem so compared to other modern websites with banners, pop-ups etc. And GOG Galaxy 2.0 reminds me just such a modern website: beautiful but not so responsive as you'd want it to be.
After some time you realize that good old downloading files is more comfortable, although it should be the other way around.