After years of limiting people to one app at a time when downloading or updating multiple apps, Google is finally raising the limiter to four parallel downloads.

The Play Store typically downloads apps in a sequence, one after another. When you’re trying to update multiple apps at the same time, it doesn’t install them together. Only a single app installs, while the rest are marked as pending. Modern phones and internet speeds are more than capable of handling multiple app installs. For example, you can update or download three apps at the same time on iPhones and iPads. The restriction makes migrating to a new phone or updating apps on an old phone a frustratingly slow experience.

With this new Play Store update, you can download up to four apps and update up to three apps side-by-side on Android. There was a time when the Play Store would let you install and update multiple apps at the same time, but Google added a limiter in subsequent releases, presumably because of hardware limitations on old phones.

9to5Google was first to discover this change, and it reports that multiple devices already have this capability. I tested it on my Android phone, and it was able to hold four app downloads at the same time, marking the fifth one pending. When I tried updating all my apps, it updated three apps in parallel and queued the fourth as pending.

The new update follows another change Google made in April this year, when it allowed two app downloads at once. However, you couldn’t update two apps at the same time. In today’s testing, my usual update time was cut in half, perhaps more. It’s super helpful because I update multiple apps often, but rarely have to download more than one app at once.

Right now, the Play Store is evenly matched with the App Store on iOS, so it’s unclear if more surprise updates are coming for this particular limitation. Google has yet to comment on the change.

Via: 9to5Google