iOS 8 update download takes forever

Me too... but eventually it worked..... took many tries.... finally jumped to 15Mb/Sec...

Changing DNS solved it for me, but not on the first try. Google's DNS did nothing to improve my download speed through iTunes. But then I tried another DNS server (Level3) and downloaded my updated in under 5 min!! You can get a list of DNS servers here, if one of them doesn't work for you, try another one.

I wish I had the same luck as the rest of you. Updated iPhone 5S and iPad mini a few days ago from iTunes pretty quickly. I have been trying to update my iPad Air for three days. Tried from iTunes, says 50 to 99 hours remaining no matter how many times I hit pause and resume I can never get a download speed faster than 400 Kbps and I have a fast home connection. Tried it over wifi, started it last night, this morning it still says 22 hours remaining. My iPad is held hostage for the next day?? This is ridiculous. I wish I could stop the process.

cschwartz59 wrote:

I wish I had the same luck as the rest of you. Updated iPhone 5S and iPad mini a few days ago from iTunes pretty quickly. I have been trying to update my iPad Air for three days. Tried from iTunes, says 50 to 99 hours remaining no matter how many times I hit pause and resume I can never get a download speed faster than 400 Kbps and I have a fast home connection. Tried it over wifi, started it last night, this morning it still says 22 hours remaining. My iPad is held hostage for the next day?? This is ridiculous. I wish I could stop the process.

You can. I believe the solution was to turn off your WiFi and turn back on and try again.. (effectively the same as a pause/resume)

cschwartz59 wrote:

Tried it over wifi, started it last night, this morning it still says 22 hours remaining. My iPad is held hostage for the next day?? This is ridiculous. I wish I could stop the process.

You can stop it by either temporarily turning off your WiFi or walking out of the range of your WiFi. Usually when you do that with downloads, that will kill the entire download process. You might not actually want to follow through with the iOS 8 update right now, anyway.

I would love to abandon it but I cannot figure out how to stop the process other than to turn off wifi completely making my iPad useless. I have tried turning off and on wifi a few times but now instead of my iPad showing 22 hours remaining it just says "update requested."

Sorry, I forgot mention in my post that I had tried that several times too. I just tried it again and now instead of my iPad showing 22 hours remaining, it shows "update requested."

Same here, my iPhone 5C estimates ruin between 10 and 25 hours, times out over and over.

Had the same problem with latest OS X for my iMac, took seven attempts before I finally downloaded it, but my MacBook Pro was able to download the OS X in eight attempts, but without Safari upgrade.

Apple must be experiencing some strange phenomina with its servers. I like the old way of updating, the app store is a disaster.

If it was still in the download process or it is waiting for a requested connection, that would mean there haven't been any changes made to your system. It downloads and completes that, then it goes through a check to verify the download, and then it starts the actual installation.

SO ... I would force a reboot with the power and home button being held at the same time. I think if you hold it for about five seconds, it will reboot.

sorry forgot to mention, I tried that too, hard reset holding down home and power button. iPad restarts and then goes back to trying to download the update. I turned off wifi on my iPad, plugged it into iTunes and am now trying again. 43 hours remaining. I guess I'll just resign myself to not using my iPad until this weekend when the update finishes.

Well I thought I had hit the jackpot. After pausing and resuming a dozen times I suddenly got a time remaining of 11 minutes!! Unfortunately when it got to 6 minutes it stopped and when I tried to resume it went back to the 45 hours.

I am having the same problem, so it is not a sample of one, but at least two... or 5 if I include my wife and kids... Apple is really behind...

That worked for me. On the 5th restart it went from 500kb/sec to 3mb/sec. Much better. I've been having the same trouble with the update for Yosemite Preview 8. I'll try this method there too.

I tried restarting the download about 50 times with no luck. I finally went to the apple store and while waiting for a genius, I logged into their wifi and magically the download completed in 6 minutes. I ended up just waiting in the store for the update to take place. Their wifi is a lot slower than my home connection so I don't know what is up. I wonder if ATT is doing something nefarious in the background to keep me from being able to get the download. The genius finally came by after the update had completed and did some diagnostic tests on my iPad which were all fine.

Count me in as another in 19075. Its crazy slow and don't anyone tell me its my internet connection. Verizon is fine, up load and download is about 50mps. Its the same thing the last 4 days, I plug my phone or pad in and the download says 30, 40, 50 hours. What BS, the rest of iTunes is fine, flying thru download new apps

Edit.......its a server issue, I just started downloading 10.9.5 which is 139 mgs normally that would download in a few minutes if that......its telling me 3 hours

2 hours, back up to 7 hours, 5 hours, 2 hours Ugh............