iOS 17’s new App Store download timer automatically appears when downloading something from the store that’ll take more than a few seconds.
- A new App Store feature in iOS 17 and other updates tells you how many hours, minutes and seconds a download will take, which depends on several factors.
- Before the change, the App Store provided a circular indicator that gave a visual hint of how long an app might take to download.
- Also, the App Store now clearly indicates when the app is actually being installed.
iOS 17’s brings a download timer to the App Store
This feature is available in the App Store apps on the iPhone, iPad and Mac with the iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma updates, launching publicly this fall.
The download timer may appear in various sections where you can download apps or app updates, including the Today view, Apple Arcade, updates, etc.
Once you hit the button to download something, the App Store replaces the button with a circular icon like before that gets gradually filled as the download progresses.
But now, you may also see how long it will take to finish the download right next to the circular indicator, expressed in seconds, minutes and hours. I say, “You may see…” because the download timer didn’t always show up for me.
Installing…
This could be a beta thing. However, a more realistic explanation is that the timer simply isn’t displayed when a download will finish in a matter of seconds. If not, the timer is shown—or at least that was my initial experience with this feature. As soon as the app finishes downloading, the timer is replaced by an “Installing…” label.
This is also a new feature in iOS 17, iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma. I’ve found it quite helpful because now at least I can tell when the app is being installed.
It’s better than staring at the circular indicator and wondering why it’s stuck. Before iOS 17, this message appeared on the Home Screen below currently installed apps.
What about the Mac?
Due to the specifics of the Mac platform, the App Store on macOS Sonoma shows the download timer a little bit differently. To be precise, the timer is invisible but appears on demand as a tooltip when you hover over the Get button.
The Mac timer even calculates your average download speed. Obviously, download time depends on a myriad of factors like your current bandwidth and internet speed, app size, the quality of your connection to Apple’s servers, server load, etc.