Google AdSense for Android app stops working with no PWA to replace it [Update: iOS]

Abner Li | Aug 17 2021 - 6:23 pm PT

Back in 2019, Google said it was “sunsetting” AdSense for Android and iOS, with users told to just check their online advertising earnings on the website. That said, the native Android app continued to work just fine until this week, but it’s now completely dead.

Update 8/17: In the past day or so, AdSense for iPhone and iPad has stopped working. It’s unfortunate that Google didn’t include an explicit deprecation notice.

Original 8/13: Opening the app today shows a yellow spinner that eventually switches to “No data” and the AdSense logo, which was never updated to the new style that makes use of pill-shaped lines and a splash of green to compliment yellow and blue.

More importantly, you get an “Error occurred, try again later” toast message. No troubleshooting step, including clearing cache/storage, resolves this problem of empty stats throughout. Meanwhile, the application was delisted from both app stores in April of 2020, so you can’t delete and reinstall.

This shutdown was originally supposed to occur two years ago, but it was delayed in typical Google fashion. The company also said that AdSense for Android and iOS would be “deprecated in the coming months” back in 2019, but the app continued working normally until this week. The only notice was in Notifications:

We’re no longer supporting this app. For a better mobile experience go to google.com/adsense

AdSense works just fine on the web and is much more modern, but you lack homescreen widgets and a convenient icon. There’s, unfortunately, no Progressive Web App with the standard “Add to Home screen” option in Chrome creating a regular shortcut that keeps the regular browser UI intact.

Meanwhile, AdSense for iOS continues to work today, but Google will presumably make whatever change it made on Android to Apple’s platform in the near future.