The Pebble was the smartwatch darling of the early 2010s, a glimpse of the future in the form of a microcontroller and screen strapped to your wrist. It was snapped up by Fitbit and canned, which might have been the end of it all were it not for the dedication of the Pebble community.
Google open-sourced the OS back in January this year, and since then a new set of Pebble products have appeared under the guidance of Pebble creator [Eric Migicovsky]. Now he’s announced the full open-sourcing of the current Pebble hardware and software stack. As he puts it, “Yesterday, Pebble watch software was ~95% open source. Today, it’s 100% open source”.
If you’re curious it can all be found in repositories under the Core Devices GitHub account. Building your own Pebble clone sounds cool, but perhaps the real value lies instead in giving the new Pebbles something the original never had, an assured future. If you buy one of the new watches then you’ll know that it will remain fixable, and since you have the full set of files you can create new parts for it, or update its software. We think that’s the right way to keep a personal electronic device relevant.
If you want a new Pebble they have a store, meanwhile read some of our previous coverage of its launch.
Presumably because the open source community around it showed that they weren’t happy with the prior openwashing? Good to see that Pebble have seen sense.
https://rebble.io/2025/11/17/core-devices-keeps-stealing-our-work.html
Jeeze,
What a pissing match.
I would not want to buy a product dependent on these two entities finding a way to work together.
Not sure it’s entirely over, Eric’s blog says “We had to build an entirely new app” which then links to rebble repo without any real acknowledgment. It then goes on to mention rebble, but it reads like a “thanks, but we’ll take it from here”
It really was a gigantic nothingburger if you read this post and Eric’s response. It was basically people pointing fingers because of lingering trust issues and had little to do with any particular situation. Eric is the one in this situation trying to make things better, which he did by open-sourcing the app frontend (the backend was already FOSS via libpebble3) and reiterating his commitment to long-term support. The stuff about him taking apps against the agreement was simply a misinterpretation of his actions, which he explained were simply him going through watchfaces to update his favorite list in the app. He is building a new appstore, which I think is sensible, but it will be based on a years-old third-party backup of the original Pebble appstore that has nothing to do with Rebble’s claims of him ripping their store (which was false as stated above). Eric’s actions seem to indicate him moving away from a Rebble collaboration while maintaining open-source repositories for most of the ecosystem, which I personally think is the right move. Rebble is in the perfect position to support legacy watches, and they’ve even put out a fresh firmware update for legacy hardware, while Eric focuses on the new hardware.
The biggest pro from this has been the fact all old pebbles are now getting firmware updates and native support on the new app. It’s not anything lifechanging, but more than enough to get a lot of them out of drawers and junk piles, their batteries replaced and new life brought to very nice, useful devices.
I spat out my coffee when the pebble app was back on the app store and I suddenly had a software update for my Pebble Steel a couple of weeks back. Hats of on a 12 year old product. Smacked a new battery in it and started wearing it again
What does it do?
Tells tine
I like it. The only thing I would want to add is GPS.
Check the Bangle.js for a hackable smartwatch with GPS
Eric didn’t even know that the watchfaces and apps were all avaliable to the public for the last 8 years and tried to act like he was blind-sided by this since his original arguement was based on “oh those rebble users are gatekeeping the apps”
It was extremely disappointing. He hasn’t kept up with the pebble community at all.
This is such highschool drama.
That’s completely untrue.
He literally admitted to not knowing of the repository/backup of the apps on bsky
Everything you just said is completely false. He’s been wearing a Pebble the whole time using Rebble services.
I just want a smart watch that can monitor my blood pressure / pulse without having to sell my soul and all my personal data to some vampire squid of a company.
Garmin + Gadgetbridge
Eric has even been a Rebble subscriber the whole time.