Mabel R. Acton
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If you use the Microsoft Authenticator app on your Apple Watch, be prepared to look for an alternative starting January 2023.
Yet another companion app is leaving the Apple Watch, and this time it’s the two-factor authentication app, Microsoft Authenticator.
In a support post spotted by 9to5Mac, Microsoft confirmed that a new update to the Microsoft Authenticator iOS app will cause the watchOS companion app to quit working.
Microsoft suggests that anyone who currently has the watchOS app installed to delete it, as it will be nonfunctional sometime in January.
According to Microsoft, watchOS is incompatible with Microsoft Authenticator’s security features.
Of course, anyone who needs to use Microsoft Authenticator to access their Microsoft account will still be able to use the app on iPhone or iPad — it’s only Apple Watch that is affected.
This marks another app that is quietly leaving the Apple Watch. In 2017, Google pulled its companion Google Maps app, but later reinstated support for it in 2020.
While eBay introduced its watchOS app in 2015, it removed it in 2017.
In 2018, enterprise messaging platform Slack depreciated its Apple Watch app.
In 2019, Niantic pulled the Pokemon Go companion app from the Apple Watch less than three years after it was introduced.
