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Date: April 07, 2024

Instagram is in no longer in friendship with Apple Watch App

Instagram has abandoned its Apple Watch app. This may greatly affect the already established Apple Watch app market as the company was making a good fortune from its Instagram followers. The update has come with a changelog that simply states, “general bug fixes and performance improvements,” removes the app altogether. 

“The Instagram app for Apple Watch will no longer be available as a stand-alone experience once users upgrade to Instagram version 39 on iOS, released April 2, 2018. We are committed to providing users with the best experience with their Apple products and we will continue to explore ways to achieve this on all platforms. Users with an Apple Watch will continue to enjoy a great Instagram experience through various rich and varied notifications."

In a statement, Instagram said, Apple Watch app was created with watchOS 1 SDK that Apple obsoleted on April 1st. Instead of putting efforts to make changes to the app again, Instagram decided to end support for the Apple watch. Since April last year, Apple has been notifying developers to build Apple watch with native support with the watchOS 2 SDK or later. Apple watch app that continues to use watchOS 1 SDK can no longer be updated.

Additionally, Instagram’s app dates back to WatchKit 1.0 days, where no third party software was able to run on a native environment on the watch. There were no features like video support or the ability to work over LTE connection. 

Instagram is not the very first company that is shunning away from the Apple. There have been a number of other companies including Amazon, Twitter, Google & Slack that have avoided dealing with the Apple watch app owing to a variety of reasons. For these companies, removal of Apple watch app has brought usability improvements in their products. Since Instagram has also abandoned the app, it is not a good sign for Apple. The present scenario only states that Apple Watch app is not considered a very good standalone application on social networking sites.

Instagram was among one of the first company to support Apple for its Watch application but its recent abandon tells another story. The app was designed to let users view photos from social networking sites from their wrist watch only.  

By Arpit Dubey

Arpit is a dreamer, wanderer, and a tech nerd who loves to jot down tech musings and updates. With a logician mind, he is always chasing sunrises and tech advancements while secretly preparing for the robot uprising.