Get your wrist-mounted adventures in while you can, Trainers: Niantic is pulling the plug on Pokémon Gofor Apple Watch.
The game's developer noted in a support article that players will no longer be able to connect their Apple Watch to the app as of July 1, 2019 (h/t 9to5Mac). The change is apparently tied to a feature called Adventure Sync that Niantic launched in 2018.
Adventure Sync gives players the ability to track their distance traveled even when the Pokémon Goapp isn't open. Once the app is synced with either Apple Health or Google Fit, users receive a weekly fitness report. That's in addition to the in-game benefits of an active lifestyle, namely more eggs hatched.
Niantic's support page for the upcoming changes lays out the reasoning for the move away from Apple Watch:
SEE ALSO: 'Detective Pikachu' brings childhood dreams to lifeBecause Adventure Sync allows Trainers the option of tracking their steps, earning Buddy Candy, and hatching Eggs in one mobile device rather than 2 separate devices, we want to focus on building Adventure Sync so that Trainers will no longer have to split their gameplay between 2 devices.
It's a sensible move, as the benefits that Adventure Sync provides are so similar to the features and functionality of the Apple Watch app. It'll be less convenient having to pull out your smartphone every time you want to interact with Pokémon Go, but with the sync feature you can at least still log your activity and draw benefits from it.
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