The original Ingress client ran from 2012 to 2018. When it was replaced, the servers it spoke to were switched off - and every copy of it in the world has been inert ever since. The files are perfectly intact and completely useless, which is a fairly new way for a piece of software to be lost.

This is an attempt to write down what that app used to say to its servers, in enough detail to answer it. On a tablet on my desk, the original client now starts, loads an inventory, draws portals, deploys resonators, captures a portal and recharges it - talking to a server I wrote from notes, running on the same machine.

There is nothing to download here, and there won’t be. I write about what I found out, not how to reproduce it. What this is, at more length →