Google Play Store simultaneous downloads are here for Chromebooks

While most people don’t tend to set up a new Chromebook nearly as often as someone like myself does, all ChromeOS users have to deal with the initial onslaught of Android app downloads when they log into a new Chromebook, a borrowed one, or a freshly-powerwashed device. It’s part of the overall Chromebook experience, but those first few minutes while the Play Store is doing its thing on your Chromebook can be a tad bit frustrating from a performance standpoint.

Once those apps are installed, you don’t think about it too often, but a new change to the way the Google Play Store handles app installs will at least make that whole process far simpler moving forward. At some point recently – spotted by 9to5 Google – Google has allowed the Play Store to dispatch app installs simultaneously instead of one-by-one as it always has in the past.

This means that you can start downloading multiple apps at once and instead of all but one of those apps being stuck on pending while you wait, the Play Store will go ahead and begin downloads for multiple apps at once, getting you to the finish line of those initial installs considerably faster. I went ahead and tested it on a couple large games and just as advertised, both 2GB+ downloads began installing at the same time. Pretty sweet!

For now, this only applies to the initial install and not to app updates. Though I think the latter would be a much more important place for this sort of dual-download upgrade, perhaps that functionality is still on the way. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve gone into the Play Store to see a long list of apps that need to be updated, so being able to hit that Update all button and have them all start the download process at once would be really nice. Hopefully that upgrade is next up for Google.