diff --git a/core/cli/packages.el b/core/cli/packages.el
index f8cdc603a..67ab83c31 100644
--- a/core/cli/packages.el
+++ b/core/cli/packages.el
@@ -19,11 +19,17 @@ This works by fetching all installed package repos and checking the distance
 between HEAD and FETCH_HEAD. This can take a while.
 
 This excludes packages whose `package!' declaration contains a non-nil :freeze
-or :ignore property."
+or :ignore property.
+
+Switches:
+  -t/--timeout TTL   Seconds until a thread is timed out (default: 45)
+  --threads N        How many threads to use (default: 8)"
   (doom--ensure-autoloads-while
    (straight-check-all)
    (doom-packages-update
     doom-auto-accept
+    (when-let (threads (cadr (member "--threads" args)))
+      (string-to-number threads))
     (when-let (timeout (cadr (or (member "--timeout" args)
                                  (member "-t" args))))
       (string-to-number timeout)))))
@@ -213,7 +219,7 @@ a list of packages that will be installed."
          (cons 'error e))))))
 
 
-(defun doom-packages-update (&optional auto-accept-p timeout)
+(defun doom-packages-update (&optional auto-accept-p threads timeout)
   "Updates packages.
 
 Unless AUTO-ACCEPT-P is non-nil, this function will prompt for confirmation with
@@ -222,14 +228,17 @@ a list of packages that will be updated."
   (print-group!
    (when timeout
      (print! (info "Using %S as timeout value" timeout)))
+   (when threads
+     (print! (info "Limiting to %d thread(s)" threads)))
    ;; REVIEW Does this fail gracefully enough? Is it error tolerant?
    ;; TODO Add version-lock checks; don't want to spend all this effort on
    ;;      packages that shouldn't be updated
    (let* ((futures
+           ;; REVIEW We can do better "thread" management here
            (or (cl-loop for group
                         in (seq-partition (hash-table-values straight--repo-cache)
                                           (/ (hash-table-count straight--repo-cache)
-                                             16))
+                                             (or threads 8)))
                         for future = (doom--packages-remove-outdated-f group)
                         if (processp future)
                         collect (cons future group)