Android 6.0 Marshmallow
For you as a user, this mainly means that older devices running Marshmallow will no longer receive new updates for Google Play Services. The version was released at the end of September 2015 and has therefore been supported for almost ten years and ten months. This makes Android 6 the longest-supported Android version ever via this Google service.
Are you still using a smartphone running Android 6? If so, your device won’t suddenly stop working. Installed apps will continue to open as normal, and older APK files can still be installed.
However, a significant part of the ongoing support will be withdrawn. New versions of Google Play Services will no longer be available, Play Protect security signatures will no longer be updated, and apps may eventually cease to be supported via the Play Store.
For years, Google Play Services played a key role in keeping older Android versions usable for longer. This layer ensured that features from newer Android versions remained available on older devices. Support for the browser had already ended earlier: Chromium ceased support for Android Marshmallow in 2022.
Millions of devices still in use
According to Google’s Android version breakdown, Android 6 Marshmallow was still running on 0.4 per cent of active devices in December 2025. Google measures devices that have connected to the Play Store in the past 28 days.
Other measurement methods yield higher figures. Based on figures from apilevels.com for April 2026, Marshmallow is estimated to be around 1.4 per cent. This discrepancy is due to the fact that some older devices are still in use, for example as a secondary device or for web browsing. With nearly four billion active Android devices worldwide, this likely still represents a group of around 15 to 55 million devices.
Google apps are also moving up
In addition to Play Services, various Google apps also appear to be raising their minimum Android version requirements. According to user reports, YouTube and the Google app, amongst others, are now requiring newer Android versions. For the current versions of YouTube, Android 10 is cited as the minimum, whilst the Google app is reported to require Android 11. Google has not officially announced these changes.
Manufacturers had long since stopped supporting it
Most manufacturers had already dropped Android 6 much earlier. The final security updates for Marshmallow were released in August 2018. Google continued to support the underlying services for years afterwards, despite the ever-decreasing number of users.
