Google Play Store can now simultaneously download multiple Android apps
9to5google.com
After on and off testing, Google looks to have now rolled out simultaneous app downloads and installs on the Play Store...

Finally all that power won’t be wasted waiting for a single app download to finish and install.

Now, they should do simultaneous app updates. That’s the slowest process on my phone.

    • limerod@reddthat.comOPMEnglish
      26·
      7 months ago

      Yeah, they could’ve bought this in 2020. Even the budget smartphones were strong enough to do this.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.worldEnglish
    49·
    7 months ago

    Alright, alright, y’all need to cut some slack for this small startup. Joe the intern had to rush this one over night with nothing but Notepad and Filezilla.

  • Chozo@fedia.io
    31·
    7 months ago

    I don’t get the hype over this. How often do you find your day interrupted by Play Store downloads that one finds this to be an important upgrade? My apps generally update while I’m asleep, I pretty much never need to wait for them.

    • vodka@lemm.eeEnglish
      31·
      7 months ago

      Kinda handy during first time setup though. Can easily be 30 system apps updating, plus all the shit you might be grabbing from previous installs.

      • Chozo@fedia.io
        15·
        7 months ago

        Ahh yeah, that’s a good point, I forgot about the recovery process. In that case, yeah I can absolutely see this saving a bunch of time when transferring devices.

    • Sl00k@programming.devEnglish
      14·
      7 months ago

      Swapping to new phones is really dreadful because of apps installs. It seems like the whole process is great EXCEPT app installs.

  • lud@lemm.eeEnglish
    20·
    7 months ago

    Now windows just need simultaneous program uninstallations.

    • limerod@reddthat.comOPMEnglish
      7·
      7 months ago

      It was for parallel downloads when updating not for new app installs and it was later removed.

    • JustARegularNerd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      Personally I don’t actually remember this, I do remember waiting for each individual app to download and install, and slowly watching the progress bar in the notification area, waiting for a new game to download on my Android 4.3 tablet. Ah, memories.

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zipEnglish
    5·
    7 months ago

    God, how pathetic they’re only doing this now, Aurora Store has had this for ages!

  • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    7 months ago

    I’m afraid this isn’t really going to be horribly effective. There are bottlenecks in the network stack and there are bottlenecks in the process of writing to the internal storage.

    Maybe if one of the apps was hosted on crappy storage somewhere… Even at 1:00 at a time and choose through some fairly decent amounts of CPU.

    • limerod@reddthat.comOPMEnglish
      7·
      7 months ago

      But, it is efficient. If I download 2 or 3 large apps they get downloaded simultaneously and the lowest size app gets installed 1st. Meanwhile, previously it had to wait until one app was downloaded then wait to install them one by one. Which would be as much as 3 times slow.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        Your mobile processor can handle a couple of threads of download per core. If you’re downloading from multiple locations and aren’t throttled and have a phone with many cores, it can go faster. Realistically, to min/max, the software should know what your max configuration is and push that per download. Once a download fails to achieve the max, then it allows other downloads to bypass the queue. For large files, it’s almost always more efficient to focus on less streams if the streams can provide you the throughput.

  • The Pantser@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    7 months ago

    So hopefully this is available for new device installs too. I dread factory resetting or replacing devices because it takes hours to download apps upon a fresh setup. If they could all just download more than one at a time I might actually factory rest and get rid of my annoying lock screen bug.

  • Mereo@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    7 months ago

    Wait? What?! Android didn’t support this basic feature? iPhone did for quite some time now…

    • cobra89@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      Is that true? Last time I checked multiple icons appeared on the home screen at the same time, but the downloading progress bar will only fill up on 1 app at a time.

      • Mereo@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        This is what happens on my phone when I update apps at the same time:

        • cobra89@beehaw.orgEnglish
          1·
          7 months ago

          Ah well the article is referring to installing apps not updates, that’s not even included in this. But maybe the apps install at the same time now too.

  • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    Finally all that power won’t be wasted waiting for a single app download to finish and install.

    Wait, what do you mean by this?

    • limerod@reddthat.comOPMEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      It takes ages updating apps one by one. Your smartphone is capable enough to download and update multiple apps simultaneously speeding the install process significantly.

      Edit: just downloads for now and hopefully updates in the future

      • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        Sure, but why would this lead to a decrease in power consumption? I’m not sure that follows.

        • Exec@pawb.socialEnglish
          4·
          7 months ago

          Modern phones do a thing called “race to sleep”. If they’re awake every other background process also runs, so it’s beneficial to do the task as quickly as possible then go back to sleep.