Power Automate

The Power Automate Mobile App Is Going Away. Here Is What Actually Breaks.

José Martínez Lago

José Martínez Lago

— 3 min read
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A mobile device sending a notification that dissolves into empty space, representing silent failures when the Power Automate mobile app is retired.

Microsoft kills the Power Automate mobile app. Your approvals still work. Your notifications do not.

Effective August 31, 2026, the Power Automate mobile app for iOS and Android is deprecated. Microsoft removes it from the App Store and Google Play, stops updates, and ends support.

Power Automate itself is not going anywhere. Your cloud flows, scheduled flows, and automated flows continue to run. The change only affects the mobile application used to access and manage workflows.

But there is a catch that most makers will not notice until it is too late.

What actually breaks

The app disappears from the stores. Existing installations may continue to work for a while, but they receive no updates, no security patches, and no support. At some point, the underlying APIs or certificate changes will make the app unusable.

The home-screen widget that lets you run a flow from your phone no longer functions. There is no direct replacement.

Push notifications stop arriving. The "Send me a mobile notification" action remains in the flow designer, but notifications have no destination unless you update the flow.

This is the one that will bite you. A flow that works perfectly in August will silently fail to notify anyone in September. The flow runs, the action succeeds, but the message goes nowhere.

What does not break

Existing cloud flows continue to run. Automated, scheduled, and instant flows are unaffected. Approvals functionality works through Teams, Outlook, and the Power Automate portal. The "Send me a mobile notification" action is not removed from the designer, so flows containing it will not error.

The platform is fine. The mobile client is not.

Where do you go instead?

Microsoft recommends three alternatives, each with trade-offs.

Microsoft Teams provides the Approvals app for viewing, responding, and tracking approval requests. If your organisation already uses Teams, this is the smoothest transition. Ensure the Approvals app is not blocked by your Teams app permission policies, because it will be.

The Power Automate web portal works in mobile browsers for flow management, monitoring, and troubleshooting. It is not optimised for small screens, but it covers the management scenarios that the mobile app did.

Power Apps mobile supports running instant flows from within a Power App. If you have a mobile app already, you can trigger flows from it. This is the closest to the home-screen widget experience, but it requires building or adapting a Power App.

The notification problem

Here is the one that requires actual work. Flows that use "Send me a mobile notification" need to be updated. Replace them with "Post message in a chat or channel" for Teams notifications or "Send an email" for email notifications.

This is not a one-time fix. Every flow that uses the mobile notification action needs to be reviewed and updated. If you have hundreds of flows, this is a real audit task.

Use the Power Platform admin centre to identify flows that contain the mobile notification action, then prioritise based on how critical the notification is to the business process.

What to do before August 31

Identify who uses the mobile app. Usage analytics and Microsoft 365 reporting can help. Communicate the timeline early. Enable the Approvals app in Teams if you use approval workflows. Audit flows that use mobile notifications and replace them with Teams or email notifications. Test the alternatives before the deadline.

The change is not dramatic, but it is one more piece of the Power Platform ecosystem that requires attention. The platform is consolidating around Teams and the web portal, and the standalone mobile app is the last piece to go.

Sources and further reading

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