Cast your mind back to 2018. The world was pre-COVID, offices were things we actually went to, and I sat on a health desk not all too dissimilar to the one I’m at now, surrounded by colleagues dressed head to toe in athleisurewear. Naturally, we spent our entire day frantically Walkie-Talkie-ing each other from our Apple Watches like we were Navy SEALs on a high-stakes tactical mission, rather than people just asking who wanted a coffee.
The Walkie Talkie feature on the Apple Watch is one of the things I was most excited about when I unboxed my first watch. And while it’s a feature I barely ever touch eight years later, I’m nostalgic for this far simpler time, and bummed that Apple is killing off the Walkie Talkie with watchOS 27.
End of an era. Over.
Sure, it was a feature that rarely worked all that well, but it was still pretty neat. One Reddit user compared the removal of Walkie Talkie to Blockbuster shutting down, and I feel the same — it’s not really going to change my life, but I feel sad all the same.
The first developer beta of watchOS 27, which will roll out this fall, shows that the Walkie Talkie app has disappeared from both the app list and control center. Walkie Talkie launched with watchOS 5 back in 2018, and allowed users to send push-to-talk voice messages to one another over Wi-Fi or cellular. Unlike Walkie Talkies you played with at school, there was no distance limitations to the feature.
The app’s removal hasn’t been officially confirmed by Apple, but users running the first watchOS 27 beta have reported that Walkie Talkie is nowhere to be found, and there is no option to redownload it.
Of course, this might change before watchOS 27 officially launches later this year, but seeing as though Apple haven’t really touched the feature since watchOS 5, it seems more likely that this is just one that will quietly be removed. Over and out, Walkie Talkie, thanks for the memories.
