Overview
- WhatsApp stopped supporting Android 5.0 and 5.1 on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, and the app will not start on phones that remain on those versions.
- The app displays in‑app warnings and tells affected users to back up chats to Google Drive or create local backups before they lose access.
- Meta said the cutoff is a technical decision to allow stronger security measures and use newer Android APIs that very old systems do not support.
- The change applies to both WhatsApp Messenger and WhatsApp Business, and distribution estimates vary from about 0.4% of devices in 9to5Google data to roughly 2% in other trackers, which still equals millions of phones worldwide and concentrates effects in India, Brazil, Pakistan and parts of Africa and Southeast Asia.
- Users who cannot install an Android 6.0 update should move to a newer device to keep using WhatsApp, and the company continues to develop new features such as browser-based call links that are currently still under development.