The change is right there in the app's own release notes. As of the June 30 update to Microsoft Translator, the listing says it plainly: "The multi-device conversation feature has been retired." Not a bug, not an outage — a retirement.

If you used Converse, you know what that sentence actually means. One person opened a conversation and got a short code. Everyone else joined on their own phone, picked their own language, and read a live translation of whatever was said — no matter how many different languages were in the room. A teacher running a multilingual parent evening. A guide with an international group. A family sitting through a doctor's explanation together instead of one person translating for everyone else under pressure. That was the job it did.

✓
Verified

Confirmed directly on Microsoft Translator's own App Store listing (version 26.7.1) — not a secondhand report:

"The multi-device conversation feature has been retired."

A genuinely different problem

Group translation isn't the same problem as two-person translation, even though most tools treat it that way. Handing a phone back and forth, or translating one side of a call — that's the shape almost every mainstream translator is built around. What's rarer is a real multi-device conversation translator: one person speaking, several people listening, each in a different language, all at the same time, each on their own screen. It was one of the few free, mainstream tools built specifically for that.

Where yTranslate fits

yTranslate was built around that exact shape of problem — a one speaker, multiple listeners translator, not a two-person chat tool stretched to fit. The mechanic is a join-by-code translation room: create a room, get a short code, share it. Anyone with the code joins for free and picks their own language. No account needed to listen, no cap on how many different languages can be active in the room at once.

As a free alternative to Microsoft Translator's rooms for anyone joining to listen (speaking uses a simple credit balance, never a subscription-only gate) — a few things worth stating plainly, including where it doesn't try to compete:

  • Listening is free, always. Only the person speaking uses any credits — everyone who joins to listen costs nothing, on any plan.
  • 130+ listening languages, with continuous read-along and simultaneous multi-language output — available to every listener, every time, not a subset behind a paywall.
  • Rooms can be PIN-protected. Share the code freely; require a PIN only if you actually want to control who joins.
  • No hard session limit. If a connection drops mid-conversation, yTranslate reconnects on its own — a session ends when you decide to end it.
  • Conversational Mode — something Microsoft Translator Converse never had — lets two people have a real back-and-forth in different languages, face to face on one device, while everyone else keeps listening in whichever language they picked.
Worth knowing: today's plans cap speaking-side room size at 16 people on the largest one. That's a plan limit, not a ceiling on what the system can actually do — it's set where it is because that's what's been asked for so far, not because of anything technical.

How it works

  1. The speaker starts a live session.

    Pick a speaking language and tap create — no setup, no meeting link.

  2. The app generates a unique room code.

    Share it out loud, on a screen, or in a message.

  3. Listeners enter the code and pick their language.

    They follow along instantly, reading or hearing the conversation translated live.

Who it's for

Educators & Classrooms

Write the code on the board. Multilingual students follow the lecture live, each in their own language.

Churches & Community Houses

Stream the sermon translation straight to the congregation's own phones — no extra hardware, no headsets to hand out.

Tour Guides & Travel

Speak once. An international group follows along on the move, each hearing their own language.

Small Business Meetings

A cross-language transcript on every device, without a corporate video-call plan behind it.

These four barely scratch the surface — see more real-world use cases for live group translation.

If Converse was part of your routine

yTranslate isn't Microsoft's successor to Converse, and it isn't affiliated with Microsoft in any way — it's an independent app that happens to solve the same problem, built around the same basic shape as what you're missing. If June 30 caught you off guard, create a room, share the code, and see whether it covers what you actually used Converse for.

Looking for more comparisons and how-tos? Visit the yTranslate blog.