What Happened to Ablo? The Shutdown, the Azar Redirect and What Came After

If you have tried to open Ablo recently and got an error, or searched for it and found nothing, here is the short answer: Ablo shut down on 30 September 2022. It is not coming back in its original form, and the app that appeared under the same name in 2025 is not the same product.

Below is what happened, in order.

Olu is an independent app, not affiliated with Ablo, Massive Media, Match Group, Azar or Hyperconnect.

Ablo at its peak

Ablo, built by Massive Media inside Match Group, launched in early 2019. It matched you with a random person in another country and translated every message both ways, wrapped in a travel theme of flights, a globe and miles. It won Google Play's Best App of 2019 and boomed during the 2020–21 lockdowns, with review volume peaking at over 4,000 a month in mid-2021. (The full story covers this.)

The long slide: 2020 to 2022

The shutdown did not come out of nowhere. Reading 84,580 reviews in date order (our analysis), you can see the app changing underneath its users:

• 2020: coin prices roughly tripled as lockdowns began, followed by a cap of 10 free flights a day and paid reconnects with friends.
• November 2021: chats started opening straight into video, and the in-house translator was replaced by Google Translate.
• February to May 2022: live voice translation was removed from video calls.

Each step produced a visible wave of complaints. After the spring 2022 removals, review volume fell sharply. Fewer people were using the app well before it closed.

September 2022: the redirect to Azar

In September 2022 the app started prompting users to install Azar, a video-chat app made by Hyperconnect, which Match Group had bought in 2021. Then, on 30 September 2022, Ablo stopped working. The only message was that Ablo had been discontinued and to use Azar.

There was:

• no advance notice that most users saw,
• no way to export chats or contacts,
• no public explanation.

Most people discovered it when login failed. We explain the likely reasons (and why nobody can be sure) in why did Ablo shut down, and the Azar switch in Ablo's redirect to Azar.

What users lost

The hardest part, judging by the reviews, was the friends. Ablo's whole point was connecting people who had no other link. Two strangers in Turkey and Mexico who had talked for three years often had no phone number or social account for each other, because Ablo was the channel. When it went, so did they. (What to do if you lost Ablo friends.)

Did people move to Azar?

Very few were happy to. Azar is video-first; Ablo had been text-first with translation. Reviews called Azar "not the same", "more sexual", and in Turkish, "Ablo geri gelsin, Azar'ı istemiyoruz": bring Ablo back, we don't want Azar. (Ablo vs Azar.)

The zombie listing: 2023 to 2026

For years afterwards, the Ablo listing stayed installable on Google Play with nothing behind it. New users downloaded it, got "something went wrong", and left one star. In 2023–26 about 38% of its reviews were one star, almost all of them from people who did not know it had closed. That is why so many people still search for "Ablo not working". (Ablo not working?)

The 2025 "Ablo" app

In January 2025 a new app called Ablo appeared on Google Play. It is published by Yancheng Binary Tree Technology, an unrelated company, and it is not the original Ablo. It passed 100,000 installs largely on the strength of the name, but holds a 2.2-star rating; its reviewers complain about paywalls after two or three messages, paid translation, login errors and bans. (The new Ablo app, explained.)

So what happened to Ablo, in one line?

It was folded into its parent company's other chat app, after two years of changes that pushed away the people who loved it most, and it closed without giving them a way to keep their friends.

Where to go now

If you miss the idea, a random person abroad, text first, both of you writing in your own language, that still exists. Olu was built for exactly this: tap to take off, land in a random country, and chat with translation both ways, free. See apps like Ablo for an honest comparison of the options.