Amber Neely
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.
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20 Comments
This makes no sense. All of the sudden WatchOS is insecure? I've been using my watch to acknowledge Authenticator requests for a long time and never an issue.
This isn't a show-stopper but it is annoying that I have to have my iPhone next to me to use Authenticator now (and not really being told why...)
With respect to all the apps that are quitting the Apple Watch, is it a return-on-investment thing? Apps like eBay and Slack make sense on the Watch. It's a pity to see all of them disappear.
Darn it, that was one of the reasons I had for justifying an Apple Watch.
all down to developer resourcing I suppose. Every Apple Watch owner that would use Authenticator already has to have the app on their phone anyway.
All the systems I use that require an authentication app work with multiple ones, including work which uses MS stuff. There are other authenticators that still have watch apps.
I'm not sure what features Microsoft Authenticator provides, but my guess is that the features of Microsoft Authenticator app for watchOS overlap with the new Passkeys feature that Microsoft, Google and Apple are now rolling out for each of their OSs.