Did you ever own (or covet) one of those e-ink Pebble smartwatches of yore?
Well, good news if you did: Google today open-sourced the PebbleOS operating system it used (minus proprietary bits) having acquired Pebble’s assets when buying Fitbit in 2021 (and Fitbit bought Pebble in 2016, but more on that in a mo’.)
More open source code in the world is good news, and it means anyone can reuse PebbleOS to build their own smartwatches, or learn from perusing the code how the former Pebble team tackled building a solid real-time OS on such limited hardware.
What made Google open source the Pebble OS now?
Turns out Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky asked them to and, surprisingly, they said yes!
Er, What Was the Pebble?
An unassuming forerunner to the modern, flashier smartwatches and fitness trackers adorning wrists the world over today, Pebble launched through a crowdfunding campaign in 2012 and kickstarted (aptly, given it used Kickstarter) the nascent wearables industry.
A lot of interconnected elements helped make Pebble a success.
- An always-on e-ink display (later colour)
- Weeks-long battery life
- Basic health tracking to double-up as a fitness tracker
- Mobile apps for Android and iOS
- Button-based UX connected to a retro pixel-art UI
Pebble sold 2 million smartwatches and kickstarted the modern wearables revolution
The Pebble also had a heart thanks to its developer story: watch faces, apps, games – anyone could write anything, and were encouraged to.
Rather like the early Raspberry Pi era, devs seemed to relish the challenge of finding out what this comparatively cheap, non-braggart, and low-powered watch was capable of.
Make sense; it’s less exciting to try and build something novel if you know the hardware (be it chip, display, etc) can handle it – hardly the case with the OG Pebble and to its 128 KB RAM and 100 KB slot limit for apps and faces!
A hit from the get-go, Pebble went on to sell more than 2 million smartwatches, nurture a vibrant community of users and developer, see an eclectic ecosystem of apps and watch faces emerge, and offer integration with major mobile operating systems.
It was all going so well until 2016.
Pebble had become overambitious and unfocused due to its early success and ran out of cash.
Fitbit bought Pebble in 2016, primarily for its IP, and duly ended production, updates, and support. Essential features were shutdown piece-by-piece by 2018.
Pebble was bought out by Fitbit in 2016, who promptly shut everything down
Google later acquired Fitbit and Pebble’s assets along with it.
Yet the love for Pebble didn’t die with official support.
The Rebble.io community was born. It has kept the Pebble spirit, software, and the mortal hardware which imbued it ticking over.
I was late the Pebble game. I bought a Pebble 2 HR in 2018 and flashed the available Rebble Web Services stuff to it so that features (like weather forecasts, cloud dictation, and the oh-so-important app store) worked.
Alas, the buttons on my device wore through (as it did on many) and even an inelegant Sugru fix didn’t last long. The device was laid to rest in my casket of ‘tech I can’t bring myself to throw out’1, but forever in my memory, not forgotten.
The Pebble Watch, Reborn
Pebble’s OG founder Eric Migicovsky had hoped a Pebble-inspired alternative would emerge from the ashes. Disappointed one hasn’t, he thought about having a second go at smartwatches, creating a spiritual successor to the Pebble he built.
Starting from scratch is a tough task so he figured being able to re-use the old OS would help.
Migicovsky says he asked Google to open-source it and, after a bit of time, aided by the fact several ex-Pebblers went on to work at the search giant, Google obliged.
With the Pebble OS source code available he’s launched a new company to revive Pebble (under a new, as-yet undecided name) — both the software and hardware because yes; a NEW PEBBLE is coming:
It’s time to take matters into my own hands. A small team and I are working on a new Pebble-like smartwatch that runs open source PebbleOS, has the same beloved features (plus some fun new stuff), and stays true to the core Pebble vision.
Pebble’s OG founder, Eric Migicovsky
This new not-yet-named watch will sport the same specs and features as the original Pebble, plus new features. It will run on the open-source PebbleOS and be compatible with existing apps and watch faces, according to Migicovsky.
“If you had a Pebble and loved it…this is the smartwatch for you“, he adds.
Not that the current PebbleOS code can be downloaded, compiled, and used from the get-go. Google had to (understandably) unpick the proprietary parts, like system fonts, Bluetooth stack, heart-rate sensor driver, in order to open source the rest.
But open-source (or non-open-source) components for those missing pieces can be sourced, built, or bettered, I’m sure.
Plus, building smartwatch hardware in 2025 is significantly easier than it was 2011. The wearables market is huge, established, and parts (and the factories churning them out) plentiful.
Heck, each time I pass a gas station2 I see no-brand smartwatches hawked (with crudely Photoshopped Apple Watch UIs) for circa £19.99. A revived Pebble strapped on wrists would be infinitely better than those hokey impulse-purchase imminent-landfill devices!
Tick, Tock, Where’s Tux?
Yeah, I know: this news has nothing to do with Linux (much less Ubuntu) since PebbleOS runs on FreeRTOS. But indulge me since open source development is relevant and the world could use more quirky devices like this rather than data-harvesting ad vectors for big tech cos.
Besides, I recall the OG Pebble being super popular within the FOSS community, and was a common sight on wrists at Linux and FOSS conferences and conventions of the era (which tracks; Migicovsky says the Pebble was initially aimed at a “geeky/hacker user base”).
It also helped Pebble’s makers weren’t icky, there were no privacy pain points—the planned Alexa integration never happened, phew—and community devs were encouraged to build apps, watch faces, and experiences that had access to the hardware.
Should this rebirth of Pebble remain true to its original goals — affordable, unassuming, yet fun tech — and avoid overambitious company-side traps — don’t mis-market and run out of cash — it could carve out a sustainable niche as a lo-fi alternative to big-tech offerings.
Interested in keeping tabs on this promising rebirth of a Pebble-like device?
Register your interest in Migicovsky’s revival through on the new RePebble website.
You can also see the source code on Github — I’ve linked to that official fork since Google won’t be developing anything in their repo.
Thanks Nick!