Google Jamboard · Retired December 31, 2024
Google retired its whiteboard and pointed teachers toward design tools. Pencil Spaces is the Jamboard alternative built for teaching — an infinite whiteboard with live video, audio, and your student right there in the room. Free to start.
Trusted across 10M+ teaching sessions worldwide
Google Jamboard
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The short answer
Google Jamboard shut down on December 31, 2024, and remaining Jam files were deleted. Google pointed users to FigJam, Lucidspark, and Miro — whiteboards built for design teams. If you used Jamboard to teach, the closest replacement is Pencil Spaces: an infinite collaborative whiteboard with built-in video, audio, recordings, and an AI teaching assistant — with a free plan.
What happened
Google announced in 2023 that it would stop building its own whiteboard and back third-party tools instead. The product was wound down over 2024 — and unlike most retirements, the files didn't survive it.
2023
After seven years, Google said Jamboard — both the app and the 55" hardware device — would be discontinued, choosing to partner with FigJam, Lucidspark, and Miro rather than maintain its own.
October 1, 2024
The app went read-only across every platform. No new Jams, no edits. Google began auto-converting existing Jams to PDFs on a best-effort basis.
December 31, 2024
The service was permanently shut down and remaining Jam files were deleted. There is no way to access Jamboard or the original Jams today.
The gap Google left
FigJam, Miro, and Lucidspark are genuinely excellent — at what they're built for: design sprints, product planning, team brainstorms. But none of them was built to run a lesson. There's no student in the room. If you taught on Jamboard, you'd been improvising — a whiteboard in one tab, Zoom or Meet in another. That was always two tools doing one job.
A design whiteboard (FigJam · Miro · Lucidspark)
No live video or audio — you still need a separate call
No concept of a lesson, a student, or a session
No math, subject, or worksheet tools for teaching
No session recordings to review or share with parents
Priced and designed for product and design teams
Perfect for a design sprint. A lot to stitch together for a Tuesday tutoring session.
A virtual classroom (Pencil Spaces)
Infinite whiteboard with sticky notes, pens, and shapes — the Jamboard feel
Live video and audio built into the same canvas
Math, graphing, and subject tools made for teaching
Upload and co-annotate PDFs and worksheets in real time
Recordings, scheduling, safeguarding, and an AI teaching assistant
Everything you liked about Jamboard — plus the half it was always missing.
Side by side
The capabilities that actually matter when there's a learner on the other end of the screen.
Capability
Retired Dec 2024
Virtual classroom
Status today
Shut down
Active
Infinite whiteboard & sticky notes
Yes
Yes
Real-time collaboration
Yes
Yes
Built for
General brainstorming
Teaching & tutoring
Live video + audio in the same room
No
Yes
Math, graphing & subject tools
No
Yes
Upload & co-annotate worksheets / PDFs
Limited
Yes
Session recordings
No
Yes
AI teaching assistant
No
Yes. - Sparky
Student safeguarding & moderation
No
Yes
Scheduling & persistent rooms
No
Yes
Education privacy (FERPA / COPPA)
Via Workspace
Yes
Free plan
Was free
Free to start
Google retired Jamboard on December 31, 2024; the comparison above is scoped to live teaching use, the job Jamboard did for educators. Capabilities reflect publicly documented features as of 2026.
Moving over
Switching is faster than the export you already did. Pick up the canvas and keep teaching.
Bring your boards. If you exported Jams as PDFs before December 31, they're in your Google Drive — upload them straight into a Pencil space.
Or just start fresh. A new space opens in seconds with the infinite whiteboard ready to go. No setup, no install.
Invite your student. Share one link. Video, audio, and the board are already in the room — no second app to launch.
By the numbers
Teaching sessions delivered on Pencil Spaces by tutors and schools worldwide.
To start. A genuinely free plan with the whiteboard, video, and audio — no card.
Room for everything — whiteboard, video, recordings, AI. No second tool to bolt on.
Built for real classrooms and tutoring, with FERPA and COPPA privacy in mind.
Questions, answered
Open a free Pencil space, drop in your old boards, and teach your next lesson in the room Jamboard never quite was.
Free forever plan · Set up your first room in under a minute
