According to a report by Android Police, simultaneous downloads may be coming to the Google Play Store, and it may happen soon. Based on the provided report, it seems like Google is testing this feature as we speak, as the feature was spotted. Google is not a stranger to running A/B tests in the Play Store, not at all.
As you’re probably aware, the Play Store cannot download multiple apps at once at the moment. You can hit install on a ton of apps one after the other, and apps will be stacked in a queue, and both downloaded and installed one by one, but not at the same time. Well, simultaneous downloads will change the download aspect of the process, as they will allow for multiple downloads to take place at the same time.
This may seem to be a basic feature that was supposed to be added years ago, and quite frankly, it is. Some users are already experiencing this feature as part of Google’s test, it seems, though we’re looking at a server-side change here, and we were not able to replicate it on our devices. This testing seems to be close to finished, though, so the feature may drop soon.
Simultaneous downloads seem to be coming to everyone, but that’s not all. The source also reports that a new internal app sharing toggle managed to find its way to the Play Store, while new Play Protect interface seems to have silently landed already.
The internal app sharing toggle is disabled by default, but it seems to be available for some. It is not available in Settings for us, though. The biggest benefit of this toggle is that you can disable the installation of all internal test channel apps at once, as this was introduced as a feature for developers. In fact, it may not even supposed to be available for everyone, but it seems to be, so, who knows.
If you hit the Play Protect option in the Play Store settings, you will see that the interface has changed a bit. It was a simple one-page interface at first, but that’s not the case anymore. The settings to scan the device and improve harmful app detection have been moved to a different screen. This is not really all that important, and may even be a worse, more complicated choice, but there you have it.
The last change that the source spotted is in the Play Store’s Movies & TV section. There’s a new filter in the TV tab, as you can now display shows by networks. This may not even be a new change, but it was not spotted by now, it seems. This is quite a useful option, though, if you want to filter out shows by your favorite network for one reason or the other.
That is pretty much everything that the source mentioned, and the simultaneous downloads change is definitely the most exciting one. Based on what we’ve seen here, that feature may be rolling out to everyone sooner rather than later, and Google will probably let everyone once it happens, and it’s definitely not a tiny addition. This feature has been requested for years by users, and Google finally came around to provide it, it seems.
