Logging into Google Plus on Android Despite It Being Dead
I spent about twenty minutes trying to sign into Google Plus on my phone last week because I needed to export a backup of old photos from 2014. The app wouldn't open—just a blank white screen after I entered my credentials. Turns out Google killed the consumer side of the service years ago, so the APK is essentially a tombstone. But there is a workaround if you are absolutely sure you have a reason to bother. The straightforward path is to sideload an older version of the Google Plus APK (v8.x or earlier) that still has the login endpoint partially intact. I used a tool called APKMirror to grab version 8.11.5, which was the last release before the full shutdown. After installing it, I opened the app, entered my Google account, and got a message that said something like "This app is no longer supported." Clicking through to a browser login actually worked—I was redirected to accounts.google.com, authenticated, and then the app showed my old streams. It took roughly five minutes from download to seeing my photos. The counter-intuitive part is that you do not need to root the device or modify any system files. The old APK simply talks to Google's servers using deprecated APIs that still respond to auth requests, even though the app itself refuses to load content. I also tried a newer APK (v11.26) and it failed outright—the login flow returns a 410 Gone error immediately. So version selection matters.
Here is what usually happens when you attempt this on a modern Android device:
- Installation: Enable "Install unknown apps" for your browser or file manager, then install the APK.
- First launch: The app may crash on startup; force‑close and reopen it.
- Auth flow: Enter your Google credentials; you will be sent to a web page to complete sign‑in.
- Post‑login: The app shows a loading spinner, then displays a static message that the service is discontinued. Your old photos and posts are still accessible via the web version at plus.google.com.
The main bottleneck is that Google actively revokes API tokens for dead services. I lost access after about two days—the app refused to stay logged in because the session token was invalidated server‑side. The only reliable way to view old content is through the Google Takeout archive (takeout.google.com) or by using the old web interface with a browser that accepts legacy cookies. If your goal is simply to retrieve photos or contacts, skip the app entirely. Use Takeout to export your Google Plus data as JSON and photos as a zip file. It takes about ten minutes for a typical 20 GB archive. The app method is only useful if you want to see the feed in a mobile‑oriented layout, which is not worth the effort.
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