Niantic is discontinuing support for Pokémon Go on the Apple Watch

Pokémon GO developer Niantic announced this week (via 9to5Mac) that it is ending support for its Apple Watch version of the game, effective July 1st, 2019. After that time, players won’t be able to connect their Apple Watch to their iPhone app.

The company announced the app in September 2016 and released it a couple of months later. Players couldn’t play the full game on their watch — it connected to their phone and displayed how far they needed to walk before hatching an egg, show how many experience points they had earned, and would alert them when a pokémon or pokéstop was nearby.

According to the company, the Watch app is being discontinued because it introduced Adventure Sync last year — a feature which tracked a player’s steps in the background, something that the Watch app did. “Trainers will no longer have to split their gameplay between 2 devices,” Niantic writes.