I woke up this morning to see that the internet had gone viral crazy with news stories that Gmail was broken, with a full factory reset of your smartphone the drastic solution. As is often the case with such early reporting, the truth of the matter turned out to be much more straightforward: don’t expect plain sailing if you install Beta software.
The Gmail Is Broken Story—What Actually Happened
Imagine my surprise when I was alerted to the fact that Reddit users were complaining that a “Google Play Services Not Supported” error meant that Gmail was, for those using the app on an Android smartphone at least, down. The biggest surprise being that I was alerted to this fact by people sending email to Gmail address. OK, I first picked it up via Proton Mail on my iPhone as all my Gmail is forwarded to a central address for ease of management. However, I quickly tried the iOS Gmail app and, nope, not broken. So I then moved to my Android smartphone and fired up the Gmail app and, nope, that wasn’t broken either.
It turns out that this was not a Gmail app error, per se, but rather an issue with Google Play services which was throwing up “not supported” errors for some users. If Google Play services isn’t working then those apps that rely upon it to deliver background services, and that includes the majority of the “first party” apps that are on your Android, including Gmail, can’t fire up. At first I thought this was likely a Beta software issue as many of the reports coming in were from users running an Android 15 Beta version from what I could see. But then others said they were using stable release Android versions, so the plot thickened. It turns out not by much though as the common denominator soon revealed itself as being that it was Google Play services itself that was the Beta software in question and likely the perpetrator here.
How To Keep Using Gmail Without Interruption
Until Google itself speaks out as to what went wrong, we won’t know the whole story behind the strange case of why Gmail was down for some people, along with other Google apps. I have reached out to Google for a statement and will update this article in due course. However, until then, there is one step that users concerned about losing access to Gmail can take as a preventative measure: don’t use Beta software. Seriously, that’s it. I use Beta software a lot, but I’m always aware that it comes with a risk of things going wrong—that’s why it isn’t release software. If you want your applications to run with as little interruption to your workflow, don’t sign up for Beta programs. If you are one of the, from what I can see, relatively few people impacted by the Google Play services issue then that same step sort of applies, in reverse: leave the Beta program and go back to using the stable release version of Google Play services.
Android Police reporting recommends leaving the Google Play services program using either the Play Store listing or directly here. And remember, if you have been impacted by the Gmail app not loading because of the likely Google Play services Beta issue, you can still access your email via the web interface. Gmail is not broken. Period.
