After adding new app installation features earlier this year, Google Play Store is now rolling out support for downloading updates for multiple Android apps at the same time.
Downloading apps on Android can sometimes feel a bit tedious. For years, the Play Store required you to download them one at a time. The next app wouldn't start downloading until it was both downloaded and installed. This can be especially annoying if you have a huge list of updates running.
Earlier this year, Google began rolling out the ability to download multiple apps at once, and as we reported in April, the feature was fairly widely available but had issues.
It only worked for new app installs.
In April, some users saw simultaneous app downloads working briefly for updates, but within a few days, the feature was almost nonexistent among users who had it working.
We're currently seeing the Google Play Store downloading app updates simultaneously across multiple devices, and several readers have seen the same thing this week. We're not sure if this is a server-side change on Google's side or an update to the Play Store itself, but this feature is much appreciated.
As far as we know, the Play Store allows you to download up to three app updates at a time. Once an app starts downloading, if you exceed three, you'll see the familiar “pending” status on the Play Store. This matches up with the App Store on iOS, where you can download up to three apps at a time.
The same three-fold limit also applies to installing new apps, which were previously limited to two at a time.
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