This post was published 7 years, 11 months ago. Due to the rapidly evolving world of technology, some material it contains may no longer be applicable.
There was a cautious excitement surrounding the launch of Allo at I/O last year, but unfortunately the skepticism was well warranted. To date Allo has been limited to use on a single mobile phone which is perhaps (in part) responsible for the slow uptake. Fortunately, this is about to change.
Nick Fox (VP of communication products at Google) has tweeted a sneak peek of an upcoming release of an web-based desktop client for Allo. This shows an interface very familiar to users of the mobile app but adapted to a larger desktop screen and running inside of the Google Chrome browser.
Still in early development, but coming to a desktop near you… #GoogleAllo #SneakPeek pic.twitter.com/f7QNFH7IHO
— Nick Fox (@thefox) February 24, 2017
This update signals not only upcoming support for sending Allo message from a PC, but also an end to the single device per account limitation. Currently if you sign into Allo on a new device, you are logged out on the previous device. With a web client in the works hopefully this would indicate that this should no longer be the case. Perhaps we’ll even get a proper tablet app in the future!
Another bonus to this upcoming web client is that it will bring wider access to Google Assistant. Until now Assistant has been limited to Google Home, Android TV and Android phones but this web client will also bring Google Assistant to the desktop (and likely anything else with a browser). So even if you do not actively use Allo for personal messages, you may just find this new web client useful when it launches.
Nick does suggest that this is still in early development and so I wouldn’t expect to see this go live tomorrow, but at least we now know it is being actively developed by Google and is likely only weeks or months away.
Source: Nick Fox (Twitter)
