Summary
- Android Instant Apps will be discontinued by Google in December 2025.
- The feature required developers to create slimmed-down versions of their apps with a maximum size of 15MB.
- Google has not updated Instant Apps in years and will focus on web-based discovery tools.
Android Instant apps were a unique take on using apps, but they never caught on. It let users launch parts of apps without having to install them. It never saw broad development, and now Google is shutting it down.
Google will officially add Android Instant Apps to the Google Graveyard in December of this year (via Android Authority). They were first launched in 2017 as a way to make app discovery faster and more seamless. The idea was simple: when tapping a link to supported content, a user could jump directly into a lightweight version of the app without downloading anything from the Play Store. It sounded great in theory, but developers weren’t into it.
Instant apps fell flat with a thud
Supporting the feature meant developers had to create a special slimmed-down version of their app. Instant Apps were capped at 15MB, which proved difficult for many, especially those working with heavy libraries or code bases. Only a handful of developers implemented Instant Apps support as a result. Vimeo and Wish were two of the earliest adopters.
It’s been eight years of this largely forgotten feature, and Google is finally pulling the plug. A notice was discovered in the latest canary build of Android Studio that warns “Instant App support will be removed by Google Play in December 2025. Publishing and all Google Play Instant APIs will no longer work.”
The alert also confirms that tooling support will disappear in the Otter Feature Drop of Android Studio.
Google is being very quiet about this
Google has not yet updated its official developer documentation with the notification, but the writing has been on the wall for a while. Instant Apps have technically been functional for years, but Google hasn’t invested any meaningful updates into it for some time. No visible progress and extra burdens placed on developers is a sure sign of an eventual sunset.
Most Android users won’t notice. Instead, Google will likely continue to push web-based discovery tools and App Clips experiences through the Play Store.
