Latest Twitter for iOS update removes Apple Watch app

Yesterday’s update to Twitter for iOS removes the companion watch app for reasons unknown.

Reddit notes that the app disappears from your Apple Watch Home screen after you update to Twitter for iPhone version 7.8, which patches a bug preventing high-res photo uploads.

Twitter did not return request for comment at post time so it’s unclear if the app is gone for good. Twitter for Apple Watch put trending tweets on your wrist, as well as recent tweets from people you follow, and let you dictate tweets.

According to MacRumors forum members, the watch app began crashing and had trouble displaying the Twitter icon on notifications following the launch of watchOS 4.

Although the company has removed Apple Watch screenshots from the App Store description, its support articles for the app were still available at the time of this writing. I’d advise switching to the awesome Twitterrific client which comes with rich watch support.

Several other major apps have quietly ditched support for the Apple wearable, including eBay, Amazon and Google Maps. Google later confirmed its watch app would return at a later time, saying “We removed Apple Watch support from our latest iOS release, but expect to support it again in the future”.

Some app developers are obviously realizing that not all apps make much sense on the wrist.

Others may have pulled watchOS support over quality concerns due to the slow hardware of the older Series 0 and 1 watches. But now that Series 3 is fast and has LTE, I think we’ll see Google Maps, Amazon, eBay and other pulled apps returning to the watchOS platform soon.

Thoughts?