Cellular App Download Limits

Over the years, Apple has gradually increased the size limits for downloading apps over cellular — in fact it most recently got a bump from 150 MB to 200 MB — it’s always been rigidly enforced and many users have the reasonable complaint that Apple shouldn’t be playing nanny here, especially as data plans continue to increase, and some carriers even offer legitimately unlimited data.

Now in iOS 13, it looks like users will finally get the “option to download large apps over cellular.” It looks like Apple will still warn users when exceeding the limit, but at least they’ll finally have the ability to override the restriction — at their own peril, of course.

It’s a welcome change, as Apple’s app download restrictions are pretty silly these days when you consider that the App Store is far from the most data-hungry app on the average iPhone; recording a 10-minute 4K/60fps video clip in the built-in Camera app with iCloud Photo Library enabled will burn through over 4 GB in no time at all, especially on a fast LTE data plan. While the iOS Photos system will try to avoid uploading that until you’re on Wi-Fi, a simple “Resume” button in the app will easily override this with no warning at all as to how much data you’re actually going to use.