Apple Bumps Up App Store's Cellular Download Limit, But It Still Isn't Enough

As it has done for a number of years, Apple limits the size of App Store downloads over cellular connections to prevent people from downloading massive files and going over their data caps. Since 2017, that size limit has been 150MB, which isn't very large. The good news is that Apple has increased that cap, but the bad news is that the new cap isn't much larger than the last.

The new cap on cellular downloads from the App Store tops out at 200MB – 50MB more than the previous cap. That isn't very much to work with, especially as the apps we use seem to be growing in size right alongside the storage capacity of our phones.

9to5Mac spotted this change, and points out that there's no way for users to opt out of this restriction, which makes things even more annoying. The fact that all four major carriers in the US are now offering Unlimited plans in some form makes this limit even more unnecessary, but alas, it seems that Apple doesn't want to be on the receiving end of complaints from angry consumers who don't realize that downloading things over a cellular connection counts against their data plans.

Perhaps now that 5G is on the horizon, Apple will loosen these restrictions further? It's certainly easy to envision scenarios where iPhone users would opt to download an app or a game over 5G instead of Wi-Fi to take advantage of 5G's increased speeds, and it isn't going to be fun to bump up against that restriction.

Time will tell, but for now at least, Apple's cellular download restriction is slightly improved but still in place. If you frequently download apps over cellular data, then you should run into this upper limit a little less, but aside from that, not much has changed. We'll let you know if Apple raises the App Store cap further, so stay tuned for more.