Finally, the Play Store can download two apps at once

When you get a new Android phone, one of the first things you’ll do is install all your favorite apps. When you’ve done so in the past, you’ve needed to wait for the Google Play Store to download each app one at a time. This can be very frustrating, especially for those of us who download dozens of apps during this process.

Thankfully, it looks like Google made this process a tiny bit faster at some point recently. Today, it looks like the Play Store is capable of downloading two apps at once. It’s a small change, I’ll admit, but anything to cut down on the time it takes to set up a new phone is a win in my book.

We have this working on a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, but 9to5Google has it working on several Pixel devices, too, so it should be pretty widespread, assuming you have a recent version of Android and the latest version of the Play Store itself. Check out the screenshot below, which confirms two apps in the middle of downloading together:

Unfortunately, Google didn’t go the extra mile and also allow for the downloading of multiple updates at once. The same Galaxy S23 Ultra that supports simultaneous downloads of new apps did not support simultaneous downloads of updates for existing apps. You can see how it’s still only doing one app at a time in the screenshot below:

Obviously, getting multiple app updates at once would probably be a more important quality of life update for Android, considering not many people are installing multiple apps at once outside of setting up a brand new phone. Still, it’s very possible Google is just taking things one step at a time and simultaneous upgrade downloads could be on the way soon.

Do you have the ability to download multiple apps at once on your Android phone? Let us know your make and model in the comments and whether or not you see this behavior.