As of this morning, more than 180 apps related to vaping were banished from the iOS app store. The newly absent apps include those used to set temperatures and times on high tech, app-connected vaporizers like the Pax 3 and DaVinci IQ.
If you have a vaporizer app on your iPhone or other Apple device right now, don’t delete it if you ever want to be able to use it again.
Apple’s banishment of the vaping related apps was first reported by Axios, and follows a decision by the company earlier this year to stop allowing new vaping apps in the App Store. Now, it seems that policy has been extended to booting existing apps.
Does your app-connected vaporizer still work?
The silver lining for current users of app-enabled cannabis vaporizers is that apps already installed on mobile devices will stay installed and functional, and users will continue to be able to install those apps on new devices—at least for the time being.
If you’re using a connected vaporizer and don’t have the app installed yet, things get a little trickier. While your gear isn’t bricked, it could end up less user-friendly, and you’re going to be locked out of some of the finer customization features that are big selling points for app-connected vaporizers.
If you have a vaporizer app on your iPhone or other Apple device right now, don’t delete it if you ever want to be able to use it again. Apps that stay on your phone seem likely to retain connectivity for the foreseeable future. But if that same vape app gets deleted from your phone, you will not be able to download it again.
How to reset your vape temperature without an app
Among cannabis vaporizers, the PAX 3 and PAX Era are the most common—at least here in the Leafly office. If you don’t have the PAX app installed right now, you can still switch between a set of preset temperatures on both pieces of kit. Presets are indicated by the four lights on each PAX vaporizer—one light glowing means you’re on the lowest preset, while all four lit up means you’re as hot as it gets.
For a detailed look at setting and resetting the temperature on your PAX 3 or PAX Era without the app, you can visit their support page.
Also gone is the DaVinci app, which allowed for temperature control and session customization. If you’re using a DaVinci IQ vaporizer without the app installed, you can still easily raise and lower the temperature using the buttons on the side of the device.
Apps for device connected vaporizers from manufacturers Ghost and Firefly have also been deleted from the app store as of this writing. Interestingly, the Storz and Bickel app, which allows for app-connected control of some Volcano and Craft vaporizers, seems to have dodged the purge for now. So if you’ve got an app-enabled Storz and Bickel product but haven’t gotten around to downloading the app yet, you might want to get on that sooner than later.
What the future holds for app-connected vaporizers is unclear. For now, at least, it’s that much harder to control your cannabis vaporizer using software on the supercomputer you keep in your pocket, so we’ll hang our heads for a world that’s a little less like a cyberpunk novel than it was yesterday.
