Google quietly killed its Slides companion remote app for Wear OS
Google Slides is probably familiar to anyone who has attended a meeting in the last half-decade — especially givenits integration with Google Meet. Before the work-from-home era, Google developed an interesting and unobtrusive way to navigate through presentationsusing Wear OS. Sticking around since 2016 without much attention, Google has recently and silently removed it from the Play Store.
The wrist-based app previously let you advance forward or back through slides, with a timer indicating how long you’ve been presenting and a progress indicator. But, as spotted by9to5Google, it’s now gone. Vanished. Desapareció. Customers looking for it can no longer find it on the Play Store or download it to a new watch.
Reportedly, the app was gettingbuggynear the end of its life, and 9to5 notes that it may have also been developed using an older, increasingly unsupported method. Google’s beentaking offenseto Wear OS apps that can’t work independently of a phone — it seems that’smore than a “recommendation,“so that could be one potential cause. Also probably related: There aren’t a lot of in-person presentations happening these days, so it’s unlikely the app was being used much or merited additional software development.
We wouldn’t take this takedown as a sign of any disinterest from Google in its own platform, either. The company has plenty of other apps for Wear OS, it recently released Wear OS 3 (which has only come to the newGalaxy Watch 4series), and leaks for its own first-party Pixel Watch have also beenpicking up. You’ll just have to settle with finding some other way to navigate through your presentations while everyone attending silently fumes about how it could have just been an email.
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