New York's updated COVID passport no longer supports Apple Wallet

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Nyc Excelsior App
Nyc Excelsior App (Image credit: New York Department of Health)

What you need to know

  • A new update to New York's Excelsior Pass app means that it no longer supports putting COVID passports into the Apple Wallet app.
  • Anyone needing to prove their vaccination status will now need to use the app.
  • Previous versions of the Excelsior Pass app did support Apple Wallet.

In what can only be described as a strange move, the newly updated version of the New York Excelsior Pass app has removed the feature that allowed a user's COVID pass to be added to the Apple Wallet app.

First noticed by AppleInsider, the change means that people will need to open the Excelsior Pass app whenever they need to prove their vaccination status.

As noticed by AppleInsider staffers, the new Excelsior Pass Plus is not compatible with Apple Wallet. Unlike the original Excelsior Pass which had explicit Apple Wallet support, users will need to head to the NYS Wallet app every time they want to prove vaccination status.

It isn't clear why support for the Wallet app has been removed, but it seems like an odd thing to do when the work had already been done to add support via a previous update. With many New York City businesses now requiring proof of vaccination before people can enter them, quick access via the Wallet app is something people would surely have enjoyed.

The newly updated NYS Excelsior Pass Wallet app can be downloaded for free from the App Store right now. If you're using the previous version and already have your vaccination pass in your Apple Wallet app, don't worry — it should still be good to go even after updating to the new versions.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.