The latest beta version of watchOS 5 for Apple's smartwatches was released last week, and developers are noticing that Time Travel seems to have disappeared completely from the Apple Watch operating system.
Introduced with watchOS 2 in 2016, Time Travel allowed for Apple Watch time shifts. Depending on the watch face chosen and the complications enabled, the digital crown could be turned clockwise or counter-clockwise to perform a time shift. This was useful for seeing future appointments, weather forecasts, or reminders about what happened yesterday.
As AppleInsider reports, developers discovered Time Travel is gone because the toggle to turn it on no longer appears as a settings option in watchOS 5. Time Travel is turned off by default, which clearly didn't aid its popularity, but now it seems to be gone forever.
App developers were allowed to tap into the Time Travel feature and use it. A number of Watch faces also supported the feature with animations to help show the time shifts as they happened. With Time Travel disappearing, it may be possible for the functionality to be retained, but up to app developers to figure out how to re-implement it.
As to why Apple is dropping Time Travel, it could be the feature simply wasn't very popular, or it could be that Apple saw an opportunity to implement something else that wouldn't work if Time Travel continued to be an option.
I'm sure we'll find out the official reason when watchOS 5 launches, which is meant to happen in the fall. Also note that this will be the first version of watchOS to not support the first-generation Apple Watch.