The Play Store finally lets you download multiple app updates at once

The Google Play Store (formerly the Android App Market) used to let users download multiple app updates, but this feature has been missing for well over a decade. Fortunately, it looks like this capability has finally been revived.

9to5Google spotted the Play Store’s new-found ability to simultaneously download and install multiple app updates. I can confirm this option is available on my Pixel 7 Pro — check out the screenshot below.

The feature doesn’t allow you to download and install more than three app updates at the same time, with any additional app updates in the queue marked as “pending.” Nevertheless, this is still a major improvement over only being able to download and install one app update at a time.

It’s unclear why Google removed this option in the first place. Speculation at the time suggests that smartphone storage back then delivered slow write speeds. Many modern phones have since switched to faster internal storage, including UFS and NVMe technologies. So it would make sense for this feature to return if storage performance was the bottleneck.

The news also comes after the Play Store gained the ability to download two new apps at once back in April. But this limit has also reportedly been raised to three simultaneous downloads, in line with the app updates.

Are you able to download and install multiple app updates at once via the Play Store? Let us know your phone make and model in the comments below!