Apps on your iPhone can now get even bigger (and here’s how much)

Apple has increased the maximum file size of iPhone apps with iOS 18. This is how big apps can now be.

Apps on your iPhone can get even bigger (and here’s how much)

You may not have noticed it, but apps in the App Store and on the iPhone have a maximum file size. A single app cannot take up an infinite amount of space on your smartphone. But these days, apps (especially games) need more and more space. That’s why Apple is slowly but surely increasing the maximum file size.

The release notes of iOS 18 beta 2 (and tvOS 18 beta 2) note that this update has increased the file limits of third-party apps. But what is the difference with the file sizes of the iPhone apps in iOS 17?

Currently, an app you get from the iOS App Store can be a maximum of 2GB in size. In iOS 18 this will be increased to 4GB. This does not mean that apps can always have a maximum size of 2 GB (or 4 GB), because programs can download additional data.

By dividing apps, an app is ready for use sooner. Then, for very large apps, the extra files are downloaded afterwards. This happens, for example, when you open the app for the first time, or in the background.

Still, it is nice that the file size of iPhone apps is being increased somewhat. This means that app makers now have to be less dependent on the extra downloads in apps.

But Apple has also set a limit for these extra files. In iOS 17, apps and games are allowed to download an additional 40 GB in total. But Apple is also increasing this considerably in iOS 18. Apps are then allowed to receive an additional 70 GB of data.

It’s nice that Apple is increasing the file size of iPhone apps. Recent games require more and more space. And due to the maximum file size that Apple had set, developers increasingly encountered these limits. As a result, they increasingly had to make concessions in their apps, for example by lowering the sound or image quality of the files in games.

However, there is also a downside. If the file size of iPhone apps is allowed to become larger, developers will certainly make more use of this. This also means that you need more storage on your iPhone to be able to accommodate the apps with this large file size. Then an iPhone with 256 GB or more storage is certainly a welcome addition.

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