Simultaneous downloads are something that should have been a thing years ago and have been a part of the Apple ecosystem for as long as I can remember. For reasons best known only to Google, the Play Store always lined up apps and downloaded them one by one, even though modern-day smartphones are more than capable of more. I’d even settle for a toggle switch that lets you disable simultaneous downloads. We don’t want some of the lower-specced phones to combust spontaneously, do we?
It looks like Google is finally coming around to testing simultaneous app downloads at the Play Store. The change appears to be a server-side one, so only a few users have been able to witness it. I wasn’t fortunate enough to be able to witness it in its full glory, sadly. Hopefully, Google flips the switch and lets everyone in on the fun in the near future.
Internal App Sharing
Last year, Google allowed developers to test their apps by allowing them to have an open beta, closed alpha, and an internal test channel for a maximum of 100 users. It is often beneficial to let a small subset of users test an app before rolling it out en masse, and internal app sharing allows users to do just that.
To be able to install any test version of an app, you need to be invited by the developer. The actual toggle that lets you do it, however, lies deep within the Play Store settings. You need to unlock the Play Store developer options by tapping the ‘Play Store Version’ option multiple times in the Play Store settings. Switching the toggle on does give you a little warning which tells you that some of the test versions of the app may not adhere to the Google Play terms of service.
