HTC’s apps will return to the Play Store this month after policy changes temporarily removed them

HTC’s hardware division has been in rough times lately. Worse yet, the company’s loyal customers were given reason to worry this month when several HTC apps vanished from the Play Store. Now, HTC is confirming that those apps are coming back, as well as explaining why they were removed.

The folks at Android Police first noticed that, over the past few months, several of HTC’s apps have been disappearing from the Play Store. In total, 14 apps had disappeared and since many of those were core apps on HTC devices, owners had reason to worry.

Affected apps included Sense Home, HTC Mail, RE (for the company’s old standalone camera), HTC People, and more.

Now, HTC has officially confirmed what’s been going on with its apps. A statement from the company (below) confirms what many speculated, which was that a change in Google Play Store policy required that the apps be unpublished until they were updated to comply. Some of those apps, such as HTC Mail, have already been republished.

HTC says that it plans to bring back HTC Mail, Re, HTC Sense Home, HTC People, HTC Sense Companion, and HTC Restore back to the Google Play Store by the end of this month. Beyond that, they say that they are “reviewing” other apps that were removed. At the very least, this is comforting for HTC owners as it signals that the company intends to continue supporting its hardware with software releases.

In order to comply with the latest Google Play policy, we have temporarily removed a number of HTC applications from the Google Play Store. Applications will be republished over the coming weeks as we deploy new updates. Below is a list of apps confirmed to be re-published and target dates (subject to change). We are continuing to review additional apps but have prioritized the below based on usage:

Apps list confirmed to re-published

HTC Mail	Roll out to Play store on 4/9
RE	Plan to roll out on 4/28
HTC Sense Home	Roll out to Play store by the end of April, 2019
HTC People	Roll out to Play store by the end of April, 2019
HTC Sense Companion	Roll out to Play store by the end of April, 2019
HTC Restore	Roll out to Play store by the end of April, 2019

More on HTC:

• HTC U11, U11+ and U12+ will get Android Pie by Q2 2019
• HTC apparently in talks to license its brand to smartphone makers in India
• HTC Exodus 1 gets new blockchain features, can be purchased for $699 in traditional money