Google Play Services receives regular monthly updates, including new features, bug fixes, and improvements. Not all those changes are worth paying attention to for general users, though Google often makes them sound like something big.
The Mountain View tech giant can keep on doing it for however long it wants to hype up those not-so-exciting features. While users may not like it, the company will also make some big announcements in between those boring additions.
One such major announcement may come very soon, as Google appears to be nearing the release of a major new feature in the Play Store. According to an APK teardown conducted by our friends at Android Authority, the Google Play Store is close to fixing one of its biggest app download issues.
Google Play Store has made significant progress in fixing one of its biggest download issues
Android users have long wanted Google to add the ability to pause and resume downloads on the Google Play Store. Users have been complaining about it for years, both on its support page and on Reddit. If you are one of those people, you may soon stop raising the issue.
In the APK teardown of Google Play Store version 53.0, Android Authority has found the ability to pause and resume app downloads on the Play Store. This means that, when it goes official, you’ll finally be able to pause an app download and resume it later.
How does it help in real-world scenarios, you ask? Well, it becomes handy when you are close to hitting your daily data limit. You’ll be able to hit the “Pause” button and then resume the download the next day when you have more data available or when connected to Wi-Fi. Currently, the only option is to cancel the download or let it continue eating up your daily data limit.
What’s encouraging is that we’ve seen how the feature works, as folks over at Android Authority managed to enable the feature on their Android phones. This is a strong indication that Google is in the final stage of its development.
As per what we’ve seen so far in a hands-on video of the feature, the “Pause” button will appear right after you hit the “Install” button on the app listing page. The “Pause” button also appears on the download manager in the Play Store, so you will be able to quickly pause or resume downloads even when you are not on the app page.
As for when it’ll be available for users, since Google hasn’t made it official, there is no information as to when it’ll go live for users. But we have good reason to believe that we aren’t very far from its availability on the Google Play Store.