A feature activated on many WordPress blogs out there is the Jetpack Mobile Theme. This is designed to take over from your own usual (desktop) theme when it’s not designed for or struggles on mobile to ensure seamless user experience.
Public service announcement – it’s over!
Well, as we enter 2020, Automattic has decided that this fallback isn’t required – after all, all developers should be developing with mobile and responsiveness in mind – whether it’s asked for or not!
What Do I Have To Do?
Firstly, do something now. T-minus one week and the feature is gone – so prepare now or be unprepared. And if your blog is even reasonably popular, you want to be prepared. Mobile usage is ever-increasing and the majority of the younger generations use mobile devices more than they use PCs. If you don’t adapt, you die.
Fortunately, the good news is the majority of themes out there for WordPress – especially the most popular ones – will already be mobile-ready and responsive. And if it isn’t, it’s definitely time to change themes.
The guys at Automattic have prepared a great list of instructions on what you need to do ahead of the Jetpack mobile theme retirement next month.
After you’ve got your responsive theme ready to go, it’s time to disable Jetpack Mobile Theme.
Disabling Jetpack Mobile Theme
To disable, it’s quite simple. If you’ve received an e-mail – and it may be one of those ones that you don’t read! – you can simply click the link that takes you straight to the relevant setting:
If not, you can easily get there through your admin dashboard by heading to Jetpack settings:
And then skipping across to the ‘Writing’ tab:
Then finally scrolling down to just below half-way down the page:
And moving the ‘Enable the Jetpack Mobile theme’ slider to the off position:
And there you have it – all sorted.
Any issues or thoughts – leave them in the comments below!