Simple Trick To Speed Up Downloads On Mac, iPhone And iPad

Whether PC or Smartphone, we spend a significant part of time surfing the Internet and downloading. However, what can be annoying is the long wait for downloads to get completed. And in an unfortunate circumstance, if the download gets interrupted due to some reason we’re back to square one!

For those who have multiple Apple devices, we’ve a simple trick that can speed up the downloading process significantly.

By enabling Content Caching on your Mac you can speed up download of movies, iCloud content, or any other media file. All you need is a Mac running High Sierra, ideally one that’s consistently connected to your network via Ethernet.

How To Enable Content Caching On Your Mac

To enable content caching on your Mac here’s what you need to do:

1. First, pick any Apple device to serve as your Cache. Ideally, we’d recommend you to use a Mac that is preferably connected to an Ethernet network.
2. Now open Mac’s settings and head to System Preference> Sharing.
   
3. In the “Sharing” settings window, check on Content Caching.
   
4. Here Mac allows you to limit the size of cache ranging from 2GB to unlimited.
   
5. That’s it! You have successfully set up the cache limit on your Mac.

In case, at any time in near future if you need to disable this option, simply uncheck this option in the Sharing settings.

How Does Caching Affect The Download Speed?

Yes, we know you must be probably wondering about this by now. Any download, whether software update or a media file, first ends up in Cache. During this, if any other device requests a download it first checks with cache. It is not the Internet which controls the speed of downloads; in fact, it’s the device.

So, increasing the cache limit on your Mac will result in faster downloads on all your Apple devices by saving the Internet bandwidth.

You can also view Apple’s Official list of various content types that support MacOS server caching.

QUICK TIP: If you’ve got more than one Mac at your place, you can do this on both. They’ll act as two peer devices in that case. The more the merrier!

So, fellas, here was a brief guide on speeding up the download process on Apple devices. If you have any other query feel free to drop us a comment.