Very slow downloading of any applications from the App Store

The download speed depends completely on your internet connection speed; looking at your Wi-Fi icon it shows less than perfect signal strength. What can also slow it down is if you are using VPN (or even have a VPN profile installed, even if you are not using it), or if you installed any worthless security apps or apps that claim they will make your phone faster or clean it up.

I’ll match your 35 years with my 50 years as an engineer and computer scientist. Neither of our experience is worth a darn on issues like this.

Yes, there are many variables, and the least likely is Apple’s content servers and distributed download servers, which can handle millions of downloads of operating systems an hour. My last iOS update download to my computer, of 8 GB, took well under a minute. The more likely reasons for throttling are on the user’s network, their antivirus and firewalls, their Wi-Fi speeds, their internet connection speeds, whether they use VPN (which cuts download speeds by a factor of 4), and many other factors, none of them on Apple’s side.

I experienced the same thing, despite my internet speed of 300Mbps apps download at 50-110mbps only, and If I pause the download and run a speed test it shows up as 290Mbps, I'm using iPhone 15, I reset my phone thought it has some issue but it's still the same. I am not using any VPN, I sat beside the router with wifi6 (speedtest shows 300Mbps so understand that its a wifi or isp issue).

I am an IT professional. And well qualified to troubleshoot this. I'm experiencing this issue as well. Which is what lead me to read this. I'm seeing this at every location if try to download at. There's plenty of bandwidth available.

I have the same problem on my iPAD Air 5th, 17.4.1. On Thursday, I turned on Developer mode as Apple help article says, to input sandbox data, it's all worked fine.

And on the Friday, May 10th tadaaa: I have no option to download any app from Appstore/Testflight, the download is eternally on start.

I did everything besides flushing device to the factory condition.

When I turn on any VPN the download is happening as usual. Seems this is country+provider issue no one going to fix.

I found similar issues reported since 2021, so draw your own conclusions.

Chat support literally said I have to call at my own expense to other country and speak in Spanish, because they can't schedule call back for me to resolve the issue. I can buy device, but I can't have a support here.

All of my work with Testflight builds is stuck for 2 days.

SELFUPDATE 20 mins later: HAH! I realized 17.5 is standing ready for install and all fixed magically after update! This stucked OS installation prevented all Appstore/Testflight downloads. Whoa.

ah ... success ...

same issue for me ... 2 Macs ... one was great on the AppStore/Updates, the other painfully slow ...

went into settings ... searched for DNS ... within the DNS tab, the SEARCH DOMAIN had my old router ... highlighted and deleted it ... it then defaulted into my current router ... saved ... rebooted ... AppStore/Apple Updates now work at regular speeds ...

HTH someone else ...

Definitely Apple side issue.

Bet they don't distribute the apps from each continent servers but from a centralized one, so top isp speeds will NEVER be hit abroad.

Im never getting above 10% my ISP speed from the appstore... had to check from router's web, since this OS refuses giving you info. Everything else flies at max speed available.

DiegoKS wrote:

Definitely Apple side issue.

Bet they don't distribute the apps from each continent servers but from a centralized one, so top isp speeds will NEVER be hit abroad.

WRONG. They distribute using a worldwide 3rd party network distribution provider (Akamai). And they have several distributed server sites for their own servers, including Ireland, Australia, Japan and China.

Apple didn’t slow down downloading new apps at all, so they clearly didn’t do it intentionally. The download speed has only one variable: The speed of your internet connection.

Are you using VPN? And have you run a speed test from your phone?

I haven’t noticed any download problems, so if Apple is throttling they have singled you out for throttling.

This should be true, but it’s not. And that’s the problem all these people raise. Yet to find an explanation.

This helped. Thanks Lawrence!

This worked!!

Sixjumps wrote:

This worked!!

VPN, among other problems it can create, always slows your internet connection to about 1/4 of the speed you are paying for from your ISP.