Google killed Slides companion app for Wear OS

Google has quietly killed the Google Slide app for Wear OS. Launched back in 2016, the Google Slides companion app served as a remote for your presentation, allowing you to move forward or back through slides right from your wrist. But it appears the app is gone from the Google Play Store.

According to 9to5Google (via Android Police), Google Slides has been quietly removed from the wearable Play Store’s “Apps on your phone” section. Google has a bad reputation for killing perfectly functional apps for no apparent reason, but in the case of Google Slides, the writing has been on the wall for some time now. As 9to5Google points out, the app hadn’t received a significant update for years and it was likely built using the legacy, non-standalone method. In addition, there were also reports of the app becoming buggy and crashing constantly on newer Wear OS watches.

If you own a Galaxy Watch 4 or Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, you can use Samsung’s new PPT Controller app as a replacement for Google Slides. Initially launched for Tizen models, Samsung released an updated version of PPT Controller for its Wear OS-powered smartwatches back in September last year. The app essentially lets you control a PowerPoint presentation with your smartwatch, making it quite useful for both students and professionals. You can switch to the next or last slide or stop the presentation right from your smartwatch without having to take out your smartphone. On the Galaxy Watch Classic, you can use the physical bezel to control the slides. If you’re interested, you can download Samsung PPT Controller for your Galaxy Watch 4 smartwatch from here.

With the release of Wear OS 3, Google released a bunch of updated first-party wearable apps, including Google Maps, Messages, and Google Pay. The company also debuted a YouTube Music companion app as a replacement for the Play Music app.

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