You can now download, install and update multiple apps from the Google Play Store simultaneously.

In April users were able to start downloading multiple apps at once. 9 to 5 Google reported that some users were also able to update multiple apps at once, however this latter feature appeared to vanish into thin air quite quickly. There could be many reasons for this, including that it needed more fine tuning.

What remained was a service that couldn’t handle simultaneous updates to apps that had already been downloaded. 

If multiple apps were waiting to be updated, they could only be processed one at a time. It was, for many, quite irritating.

Following the Google update in April for its Google System apps, PCMag ran a test on the new multiple download facility and found the updated operating system could handle two new downloads at a time: “The third game was shown as pending, so it seems like two is the limit for the number of simultaneous downloads. (Still twice as fast as it was before.)”

If you attempt you update all your apps, Google Play Store will prioritise three apps and start downloading and installing the updates. This matches Apple’s three updates. But there are the usual caveats built in around speed and connections.

On Android now the remaining apps are tagged “pending” and are subsequently updated.

It has been reported that the simultaneous update feature is being rolled to Android users over the coming weeks. 

Apple has long supported multiple simultaneous downloads.