Google’s Daydream VR platform is finally and fully dead

While the Daydream View headset will still work, Google will not provide any new updates or support.

What you need to know

• Google’s Daydream VR platform is officially dead.
• Google today announced the end of support for the platform.
• The company will not be pushing out any new software updates, and Daydream may not even work with Android 11 devices.

The writing was already on the wall when Google dropped support for its fledgling Daydream VR platform on the Pixel 3a and Pixel 4 series. At the same time, Google also stopped selling its headset designed to work with the platform, unimaginatively called the Daydream View. Now, the Mountain View giant has officially added a tombstone for the VR platform in the ever-growing Google Graveyard.

The new service update) for Daydream states:

Daydream VR software is no longer supported. You may still be able to access the service, but it won’t receive any more software or security updates.

In fact, the company says the Daydream app may not even work on devices running Android 11 or later. If you already own a Daydream View, Google’s first-party headset built for the platform, or any related third-party apps and content, these should still work. But with the platform now spurned by Google, most developers will likely follow in Google’s footsteps and end support for their apps and stop pushing out new updates — if they haven’t already done so.

The company also officially confirmed in the post that it’s no longer selling the Daydream View headset, something that was already apparent to anyone watching its online store for a while.

If you’d still like one last huzzah with the moribund VR platform, you could always try cooking up your own VR headset, thanks to Google’s open-source design for Cardboard. Though looking at the state of the Cardboard GitHub repo, don’t expect any new updates for that, either.

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