The Facebook Messenger app for Apple Watch will be discontinued. At the end of the month, the Facebook Messenger app for Apple Watch will be discontinued and it will no longer be possible to reply to messages from the wrist with the smartwatch.
iPhone with MicroLED display in Apple’s roadmap
A post on Twitter highlights a message that has appeared to some users, informing them that after May 31 Messenger will not be available on Apple Watch but that it will in any case be possible to continue receiving Messenger notifications on the watch.
A spokesperson for Meta (the company that includes Facebook under its hat) confirmed the discontinuation of the app to Reviewgeek, explaining: “People will still be able to receive Messenger notifications on their paired Apple Watches, but from the end of May they will no longer be able to answer from their watch. They will be able to continue using Messenger on their iPhones, desktops and the web.”
The reason for Meta’s decision is not clear; some hypothesize the company’s willingness to push users to stay more on the smartphone, others highlight the lack of usefulness compared to the iPhone app and that other developers have also discontinued companion apps for Twitter, Instagram, Target, Huber, etc. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman believes the decision is an admission that apps that offer these experiences on the iPhone don’t always make sense on the Apple Watch, highlighting that other smartwatch companion apps have also never caught on.
What makes Meta’s move strange is news that comes in conjunction with the Google I / O conference, during which the imminent arrival of WhatsApp for Wear OS (formerly known as Android Wear), a version of the Google’s Android operating system designed for smartwatches. The latter app should allow you to reply to a message with a voice recording or by transforming the voice into text (it will not be possible to search through messages or create new messages).
