Nov 2, 2022 • by Will Murphy

Hackathon, App Updates & More

Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s been a year since our last blog post announcing the launch of the Rebble developer portal and in that time we’ve seen a whole host of new apps and watchfaces submitted to the appstore. Rebble continues to have an amazing community behind it, so in this blog post we’re going to take a look at a few highlights from the last year and announce our first hackathon. But first, how many of us actually are there…?

The Rebble Alliance

One question we’ve always been interested to know the answer to is “how many Rebble users are there?”. Rebble web services logs give a rough estimate, but we’ve never known for sure. A few months ago we deployed an update to RWS that listens for the analytics data the Pebble app sends home. We only store the non-personal information from it, but that’s enough for us to see the result: over 24,000 Rebble users!!

Now, this number should be taken with a pinch of salt as some of these pings will be from users with the Rebble’d Pebble app installed who are not actively using their Pebbles still, but if we just look at pings from devices with watches connected we get a healthy 16,000 Rebbles! It’s unsurprising that these days the majority of our users are on Android, due to the fact that the app can still be side-loaded easily unlike on iOS.

It really is amazing to see so many people out there still using Pebbles. Thank you to everyone who continues to be part of the Rebble community. Now, speaking of the Android app…

The Android app gets an update

Fitbit absorbed Pebble. Google absorbed Fitbit. Despite the Pebble app being a double hand-me-down, we recently saw the Android app get its first update in 4 years! This update changes the Pebble app to be 64-bit, which means it can be installed on the Pixel 7 - the first Android phone to ship with this hard requirement. You can download the app here. The app update has also improved the reliability of caller ID.

A massive thank you to Google for putting the effort in to support an app so old it isn’t even hosted on their own app store!

You can read more about this at any of the following links:

Announcing our first Hackathon!

Now for the really exciting part: we’re thrilled to announce that we’re running our first hackathon on the 18-20th of November. We’re hoping it’s the first of many too, hence the optimistic 3-digit name! It’s a bit of an experiment on our part, but the idea is that anyone who wants to take part simply fills out the form, sets up their dev environment, and joins in on that weekend by building a fun watchface, watchapp, or tool for the Pebble watch.

Everyone who uploads an app to the appstore during the hackathon will receive free Rebble stickers, and our favourite submission(s) will receive a special prize (likely to be a shiny pebble watch).

For more information and live updates, check out the dedicated hackathon page. For even livelier updates be sure to follow us on Twitter. During the hackathon weekend we’ll have dedicated channels on Discord too.

A few more things

Here are a few more minor updates from the smartwatch community that refuses to move on…

#buy-sell-trade

Following Discord’s launch of a more mature forum system, we now have a buy/sell/trade channel on the Rebble Discord Server. This is a great place to let people know of any good deals, find an old watch a new home, or buy another Pebble (to go with your other 10).

#releases

We also recently added another new channel: #releases. This channel is read-only, and updates whenever a developer adds or updates a new app or watchface on the appstore.

Emoji Replacement Project

Some Rebble users are working on a project that uses Pebble language packs to add support for more modern emojis. It’s a fun project that anyone can contribute to. Check out the GitHub page if you’re interesting in helping out.

So there it is, a few updates from the ever-active world of Rebble. To keep up to date we recommend joining the Discord server, where there are literally dozens of us. And if you really want to get involved, here’s the link to the hackathon page once again!

Oct 24, 2021 • by Will Murphy

An all new developer experience

Hi All, today we are happy to announce that the new Rebble developer portal is live! This has been in the works for a while now, and involved extending the capabilities of the appstore backend, as well as building a new frontend.

The result is a shiny new way for you to upload, update, and manage your apps and watchfaces on the Rebble store, replacing the cumbersome old rebble.io/submit process! Let’s take a look.

To get started, head over to dev-portal.rebble.io. If you migrated your pebble account back in 2018, you should see your watchfaces and apps as soon as you log in. If you didn’t migrate your account, you’ll need to follow the steps to link your newer Rebble account with your original developer ID.

Once you’re logged in you’ll see a list of your watchfaces and apps. You can upload new releases, change appstore listing information, manage screenshots and more!

Uploading new apps and faces is easy too, just press the ‘new app’ button on the left hand side to go through the upload process.

We’re lucky enough to still see a decent number of people developing for the Pebble smartwatch, which is a testament to the development process and the Rebble community. Hopefully this new tool will enable existing developers to get their apps and updates out faster, and perhaps even entice new developers.

Check it out at dev-portal.rebble.io. If you need assistance, check out the help centre at help.rebble.io or ask a question on Discord.

Feb 1, 2021 • by Ish Ot Jr.

Get a (Side)load of our New Android App!

It’s a tribute to Pebble’s vision and engineering prowess that their watches still provide value to tens of thousands of wearers more than four years after their much-lamented demise — of course, we may have helped along the way, but a lot of things “just work” as they always have. One exception to this, however, is the ability to sideload Pebble apps and firmware on modern Android devices — even Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky ran into difficulties with a .pbz file recently, and while we got it working, there are many more hoops to jump through than the average user should have to deal with. Hence our introduction of Sideload Helper by Rebble — the missing bridge between Pebble files and the legacy Pebble app!

The app began as a discussion on the Rebble Discord server:

“I had the idea to make an app that made sideloading .pbws easier, since that functionality was broken in the original Pebble app.” says Lavender Glaab, one half of the dynamic duo behind the project. “Alice Grey had it working an hour later, and we had a Play Store page within 24 hours. It was really cool to see this app come to life thanks to her programming skill, and I think it’ll be a useful tool for anybody who uses their Pebble on Android.”

In addition to sideloading .pbw (watchface/watchapp), .pbl (language), and .pbz (firmware) files, the app also handles Rebble appstore links — in fact it will even translate legacy Pebble appstore links, providing users have Rebble Web Services set up. Finally, the app will facilitate the eventual transition to Rebble’s own in-development mobile app.

While the developers have achieved their initial goal of making sideloading easier on modern Android devices, there’s still more to do. One particular goal is localization — the process of adapting the app to work with different spoken languages — which is actually something the team could use help with! If you would like to contribute translations, or even just let us know what languages you’d like to see support for, please get in touch via our Sideload Helper localization issue on GitHub.

The particularly observant Pebbler may have noticed a fun little easter egg in the app ID (visible in the Goole Play URL): the name Charon in io.rebble.charon refers to the mythological ferrier of souls from the world of the living to the world of the dead — just like Sideload Helper by Rebble ferries files into the undead Pebble APK that still gives life to all of our watches!

Sep 4, 2020 • by Joshua Wise

Announcing: Rebble Grants!

Hello, hello! Joshua here, with some exciting news. @ishotjr and I were chatting some recently, and we’ve been super excited by some of the things that people have been working on in Discord. We were wondering to ourselves: what can we do to make it even more exciting to contribute? Well, we took a look at the Rebble Alliance’s books, and we’re happy to announce something new: Rebble Grants!

Rebble Grants are our new plan to reinvest some of the proceeds from running the Rebble Web Services into development that keeps Pebble watches – and the Rebble service! – running well into the future. We’ve been saving up a little money over the past few years (!) of running the service (more on that in “The Shiny Rebble Future”, from last year), and we’ve allocated $25,000 to fund all kinds of things that might make the world a little better for Rebblers! Some of the things we hope to fund are:

work on a replacement mobile app for Pebble;
development on the RebbleOS firmware replacement project;
design work that supports the Rebble Alliance’s goals;
new features for Rebble Web Services; and
development on new watchapps or watchfaces.

Of course, if you want to do something that you think fits within our general goals, but that we didn’t list above, please let us know and we’ll tell you if it’s a match! We’re looking to fund all different sizes of projects, big to small; we’ll offer funding proportional to the importance of the proposal to the Rebble Alliance’s goals, and of course proportional to the amount of work that it’ll be to do it. Remember that you can submit multiple grants, so you can decide whether you want to go big right away, or whether you want to break things up into phases.

If you’re ready, you can submit a grant proposal starting right now! And if you just want to chat about it, we’re here for you – come talk to @joshua or @ishotjr on Discord.

We’re super excited to be launching this – we’re thrilled about getting to invest more in Pebble into the future, and we love the idea of kickstarting a new wave of Pebble development. We’re looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Apr 13, 2020 • by Will Murphy

Squeezing the most out of your Pebble

Hi there! It’s Will here (some of you may know me as @Will0 on Discord). In the ~6 months since our last blog post a lot has happened, both in the Pebbleverse and the real world. Yet, despite the ever-increasing gap between the Pebble shutdown and today, still new people are signing up with Rebble to bring their beloved smartwatch back to life!

On that note, there have been a number of similar questions over the last few months on Reddit and the Rebble Discord, such as ‘why do I need to use RWS’, ‘I’m struggling to get setup’, ‘What are the best apps to use in 2020?’.

In this post we’ll go over the answer to all of these, as well as cover how you can squeeze the most out of your Pebble in 2020.

Let’s start with the easy questions first…

What is RWS / Why do I need it?

RWS stands for Rebble Web Services, and is what most people mean when they say ‘Rebble’ (though Rebble encompasses more than RWS, I’ll get to that later). RWS replaces the old Pebble servers, but does not replace the app - instead, during setup, you’re telling the original Pebble app to point to Rebble servers. Without RWS you’ll have to sideload Pebble apps, and won’t get any of the other server-dependent functions. RWS provides two tiers: Free and Paid. Here’s what you get with each:

Free Tier:

Access to the Rebble appstore
Timeline Server Support (3 hour sync period)

Paid Tier:

Access to the Rebble app store
Timeline Server Support (30 minute sync period)
Voice Dictation (note that iOS SMS reply doesn’t work)
Weather API (For the system weather app and timeline pins, watchfaces do not need this as they handle it themselves)
You fund the free tier and other Rebble work

How do I get setup with RWS?

Follow the guide at rebble.io/howto. Do not use any ‘Rebble’ apps from the appstore, as they aren’t legitimate and probably don’t work. If you run into any issues, check the ‘common issues’ section under the howto, or ask in #rebble-help on Discord.

What doesn’t work anymore?

Since the Pebble shutdown in 2016 some small features don’t work anymore, namely:

Timeline based apps that use ‘topics’, which allow lots of users to subscribe to a single source of timeline pins. But this is a small percentage of timeline apps, the rest still work. Note that your calendar pins are special, and do not require the timeline server to work.
Reply to SMS on iOS - Pebble used clever carrier-specific workarounds for iOS’ locked down SMS behaviour in a way that Rebble can’t easily replicate.
Apps that rely on servers no longer available - Some apps serve their settings page from web servers, and if those servers don’t exist anymore you can’t setup the apps. It’s not always a total loss though.

So what can I do with my Pebble in 2020?

The sky is the limit! Most of the apps and watchfaces on the appstore still work, and more are still being published - Like swanswanswanswansosoft’s Covid-19 tracker.

Apps

Here are some great apps that still work and are useful daily:

App	Description	Platform
Checklist	A checklist of items, for shopping etc.	Both
Timer+	Pretty, animated timer	Both
Alarmist	Set phone alarms from your watch	Android
Dashboard	Control your phone from your Pebble	Android
Dialer for Pebble	Better call integration	Android
Skunk	Store and view barcodes (for reward cards etc.)	Both
RSS Reader	Browse and read RSS feeds	Both
Snowy ($2.99)	Voice assistant for Pebble	Both

… some other personal favourites …

App	Description	Requires Voice	Platform
HTTP Push	Make HTTP Calls (useful for home automation)	No	Both
News Headlines	View BBC News Headlines	No	Both
Solanum	A pomodoro timer to help you focus	No	Both
Music Boss	A better music app	No	Android
Piny Wings	A fun little game	No	Both
Pebtris	You’ll have to hum your own theme music	No	Both

..and some that have been released only recently:

App	Description
Hand wash timer	Make sure you wash your hands for long enough!
2019-Ncov	Track the number of Covid-19 cases around you
RSS Reader	Read the title and contents of your favourite RSS feeds
Hybrid Watchface	A minimalistic watchace for Pebble Time and later
Sheikah Slate Watchface	The power of the sheikah slate on your wrist!

Timeline

June last year Rebble implemented timeline support. Which means you can once again push news, data, stocks, events and more to your timeline. It’s a convenient way to get information you can about available quickly but unobtrusively. As some you already know, I wrote a service that lets you hook anything from If-This-Then-That to Pebble timeline, making it easy to push data.

As an example, I push the following data to my timeline:

Data	Method
BBC Breaking News	IFTTT: New Tweet to Timeline
New post to /r/Pebble	IFTTT: Reddit to Timeline
New RSS feed	IFTTT: RSS Feed applet to Timeline
NASA Breaking News alerts	IFTTT: NASA to Timeline
Monzo Debit card payments	Timeline Bounce Server
New Hot item on hacker news	IFTTT: Hacker News to Timeline

This keeps my timeline full of interesting stuff to read when I choose to. Only BBC breaking news creates a notification, the rest is passive and I either read it when it pops up in timeline peek or when I scroll back through timeline past (By mapping the ‘up’ quicklaunch to timeline past)

To get going with timeline you’ll need this app to generate a ‘token’ and to follow this guide or - if you prefer pictures - this guide. It helps if you’re familiar with If-This-Then-That too.

Developing New Apps

Do you know how to program in C or JavaScript? Maybe you want to learn? Developing on the Pebble is super fun and between the #app-dev channel on the Discord and the documentation there’s plenty of support still.

To get started you’ll need the SDK. For which there are now a few options:

Once you’ve got an app or a watchface you’d like to publish, you can do so through the new Rebble developer portal. This developer portal is a work in progress, but the basics are there now. Watch this space!

Some other neat tips

Here are a couple of neat Pebble tips that I’ve seen recently, that maybe you didn’t already know:

When you start playing music on your phone, the stock music app will move to the top of your app list on your watch, making it easy to open by pressing select twice from your watchface
Holding back from a notification will toggle quiet time
Enabling ‘Stand-By Mode’ from Settings -> System on your watch will disable Bluetooth when your Pebble doesn’t move for 30 minutes, saving battery power

Darksky API Shutdown

You might also have seen recently that Apple have purchased Darksky, one of the most popular weather API providers for Pebble apps and faces. Apple are going to shut down the API June 2021, and have already stopped issuing new API keys. Whilst this won’t affect the Rebble weather service, watchfaces that require this API will no longer work properly from June 2021. There’s plenty of time to come up with a replacement solution though, so I’m hopeful.

What else are Rebble up to?

Work continues in the background by our trusty band of volunteers, which can be followed on Github and Discord.

RebbleOS (the replacement firmware) continues to get frequent updates, with automated testing being a recent addition, as well as loading apps over bluetooth! Check out #firmware for more.
The RWS infrastructure has seen some upgrades recently, moving some services to Google Cloud and integrating operational analytics and observability tooling to make finding and fixing errors and choke points easier.
RWS Bugfixes! - For those of you on iOS, a fix was recently deployed that resolves the locker sync issue some of you were experiencing. If this has affected you, check out this Reddit post. You’ll also notice that the ‘see all’ buttons that mysteriously disappeared from the appstore are back for good now.
Work on the developer portal has begun, to make submitting new apps easier.
There’s even some work on a replacement mobile app, though this is a huge piece of work likely to take time.

So there you have it, the answer to some of the more commonly asked questions and hopefully a demonstration of just how much functionality you can get with a few apps and some timeline trickery! At some point I’d like to do a blog post of my Pebble workflow, and all the cool things I use it for, so watch 😉 this space.

Finally, if you have a question that wasn’t covered in this post, check the Common Issues section or stop by #rebble-help on Discord. If there’s one thing the Pebble community isn’t short on, it’s people willing to help!