Before you apply any changes please make sure that they include any necessary changes to suit the 1.16 version.

Some of the changes are:

Deployment in the extensions/v1beta1, apps/v1beta1, and apps/v1beta2 API versions is no longer served

• Migrate to use the apps/v1 API version, available since v1.9. Existing persisted data can be retrieved/updated via the new version.
• Notable changes:
  • spec.rollbackTo is removed
  • spec.selector is now required and immutable after creation; use the existing template labels as the selector for seamless upgrades
  • spec.progressDeadlineSeconds now defaults to 600 seconds (the default in extensions/v1beta1 was no deadline)
  • spec.revisionHistoryLimit now defaults to 10 (the default in apps/v1beta1 was 2, the default in extensions/v1beta1 was to retain all)
  • maxSurge and maxUnavailable now default to 25% (the default in extensions/v1beta1 was 1)

-- Kubernetes.io: API deprecations in 1.16

Please refer to above link to check aforementioned necessary changes.

kubectl patch

There is an official documentation about it: Kubernetes.io: update api object kubectl patch

Unfortunately the kubectl patch did change the YAML definition from the example but it was unable to change the apiVersion.

kubectl convert

There is a tool built into kubectl named kubectl convert which converts existing YAML to suit the 1.16 version. Please take in mind that it will be deprecated soon. Take a look at the article about it: Medium.com: Kubectl convert update api versions automatically

shell script

You could also write a script with the language of your choosing that will change:

• apiVersion: apps/v1beta2
• apiVersion: apps/v1beta1

to:

• apiVersion: apps/v1

You could also take a look on: Github.com: Kustomize

Please let me know if you have any questions to that.