We’ve written full troubleshooting steps a little further down in this post. How do I fix slow app or iTunes movie downloads on my iPhone and Mac? Rumors suggest Apple is gearing up to ditch iTunes altogether. This doesn’t affect all users, but it isn’t hard to find forum threads with over a thousand users having this problem. In a lot of cases, the sad fact of the matter is this: iTunes and the App Store aren’t programmed to download as efficiently as we expect them to be. If your internet connection was the problem, you’d notice slow downloads and streams from other places too, like YouTube. And if your Internet was too slow you’d notice it with other apps too. You can usually tell if iTunes quit or your device restarted itself.

Other software, like your firewall or security software, blocked the download.

Your device restarted before the download completed.

iTunes or the App Store quit before the download completed.

iTunes or the App Store lost connection to the Internet.

Why is my iTunes or App Store download so slow? Apple suggests these causes for slow iTunes or App Store downloads:

How to fix when your payment method is declined in iTunes or the App Store.

iTunes not recognizing iPhone XR or iPhone XS on Windows?.

Cannot connect to iTunes Store or App Store.

Update your operating and security software.

If you’re short on time, try these quick tips to see if they help: So what’s going on and how do you fix it? Quick Tips But no matter how often they retry, it still never finishes downloading. Some users get a message saying “Unable to download ” with the option to Retry. But often the download says it will take much longer than expected or it doesn’t even finish at all! When you download apps, music, movies, or other stuff from Apple you want it straight away. Why are iTunes movies and App Store apps so slow to download!? It has affected a great number of users for many years - turning some of them away from Apple’s platform for good.

So find out what you can do to fix them on your iPhone and Mac. It’s movie night and you want to get started, but that darn iTunes rental won’t finish downloading! Slow movie or app downloads from iTunes and the App Store are time-consuming frustrations.

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