If the smartwatch that you’re using is on the Wear OS platform and if you’ve been dependent on the Runkeeper app, you might want to look for an alternative app or maybe change your wearable device. Runkeeper has informed its users that the app will no longer be available on Wear OS devices. The only explanation they gave is that they are unable to provide “the best tracking experience” that they wanted to give on this platform and so they just decided to discontinue.
Wear OS has been undergoing some problems this year and has seen several apps discontinue their support for the platform. Even Google apps like Nest and Hangouts have left the platform. Runkeeper is just the latest one to do so, saying that version 9.13 of the app, which will be released in the next few weeks, will not be available on the Wear OS platform anymore. While their team has been working on making the app useful, they weren’t able to do so this time around.
A follow-up message to its users further explained that it was the “buggy experience” that they have been unable to fix. The fact that only a small percentage of users were actually on Wear OS also cemented their decision to just focus their “limited resources” on other things that can help the majority of its users. This has been the most common excuse of developers who discontinue smartwatch apps, that there aren’t enough users to necessitate keeping it on a specific platform.
It was just last year that Google re-branded its Android Wear OS to Wear OS so that both iOS and Android users will be able to use it. However, both users and developers are seemingly ignoring and leaving it as evidenced by the apps discontinuing support and saying that only few people are actually using it anyway.
Currently, the Runkeeper app is still functional on Wear OS but once the app rolls out in a few weeks or so, expect it to stop working altogether.
