Not a big loss, but it was kind of neat
Google Slides is probably familiar to anyone who has attended a meeting in the last half-decade — especially given its integration with Google Meet. Before the work-from-home era, Google developed an interesting and unobtrusive way to navigate through presentations using 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 by 9to5Google, 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 getting buggy near the end of its life, and 9to5 notes that it may have also been developed using an older, increasingly unsupported method. Google’s been taking offense to Wear OS apps that can’t work independently of a phone — it seems that’s more 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 new Galaxy Watch 4 series), and leaks for its own first-party Pixel Watch have also been picking 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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