Android: Google disconnects the plot of instant apps

In the distant year 2016, Google launched a promising novelty on Android: the Instant apps. This novelty made it possible to use a partial version of an application or a game on your smartphone without having to install it fully via the Play Store. Practical to try a service quickly and without cluttering your terminal or consuming data before possibly downloading the real application. Except that here, the success does not seem to have been enough at the rendezvous, since Google will end the instant apps in a few months.

Practical feature, but little used

It is by using the latest Canary Studio Canary version that an unequivocal developer came across an unequivocal ad: “The management of the instant apps will be deleted by Google Play in December 2025. The publication and all the instant APIs of Google Play will no longer work. Tool support will be deleted in Android Studio Otter Failture Drop.“

There is no doubt that Google will make a real announcement soon. If you are a developer working for a moment app, you can stop immediately. On iOS, in 2020 Apple launched an equivalent with iOS 14, the app clips.

The abandonment of this functionality most likely comes from its low use by applications. If services like Vimeo, Buzzfeed, Wish or some video games took the train at the start of the moment apps on Android, quickly the constraints imposed had to cool more than one developer. It is indeed necessary to create a rapid and dedicated version of its application, weighing less than 15 MB. This size constraint is probably insurmountable in many cases.

Given the reduced number of applications offering an instant apps, this killing should only impact users.