Google Play Store now allows multiple app updates at the same time

Google is improving its Play Store: Multiple app updates can now be downloaded at the same time. This long-awaited feature promises faster updates and an improved user experience for all Android smartphone owners.

Finally an end to lengthy app updates

Good news for Android users: The Google Play Store is getting a long-awaited feature back. How 9to5Google reported, it is now possible to download and install multiple app updates at once. This feature, which was once available in the predecessor “Android Market”, marks a significant advance in the usability of the Play Store. Previously, users could only update one app at a time, which could often be frustrating when there was a long list of updates. With the new update, up to three apps can now be downloaded and updated simultaneously. Other upcoming updates are displayed as “Pending” and wait to be processed.

Google had already introduced a similar improvement in April 2023 by introducing the ability to download two apps at once. However, this feature disappeared after a few days. The current implementation seems to be more robust and permanent.

Technical progress

The return of this function is no coincidence. In the early 2010s, the feature was removed due to the limited performance of smartphones at the time. The slower storage technologies could be overwhelmed by multiple simultaneous downloads. Modern smartphones, however, have much faster storage technologies that can easily handle such multitasking tasks. With this update, Google is aligning the functionality of the Play Store with Apple’s App Store, which also allows the download of up to three apps at the same time.