Pebble Cements Its Smartwatch Legacy As Google Shares Source Code With The Community

Many of the best smartwatches on the market last a day or two at most, a far cry from the week-long battery life that Pebble watches boasted over a decade ago. This is precisely why many people still use their Pebble watches, even though the watches were discontinued around 2016. Community-led efforts have valiantly kept Pebble watches alive all these years, but they have been hampered by a lack of access to the devices’ source code. Thankfully, Google has just released the source code for the Pebble watch, giving developers a chance to continue development.

Pebble, a Kickstarter startup, emerged in the early 2010s with smartwatches that met the needs of many users. The brand distinguished itself by using e-paper-like reflective LCDs, displays that reflect ambient light. Thanks to their e-paper-like displays, Pebble watches offered always-on screens that were readable in direct sunlight. The designs of Pebble watches were minimalist and functional, making them quite popular among a broad demographic. Furthermore, their simple OS and power-efficient processor allowed them to achieve up to a week of battery life on a single charge. Despite the simple OS, the software platform was open and easy to work with, which attracted developers to create a wide range of apps and watch faces.

Although Pebble released several products over the years, it failed to build a large enough following to compete with brands like Apple and Samsung. Ultimately, the company ran out of funding, leading CEO Eric Migicovsky to sell its intellectual property to Fitbit in 2016.

While Fitbit hired many former Pebble employees, it did not release any new products using the Pebble brand or software platform. Consequently, the source code for the OS and firmware remained inaccessible, hindering developers from porting alternative operating systems to Pebble watches.

Despite this obstacle, the Rebble team — a community-led project dedicated to restoring functionality to Pebble watches after the company’s closure — attempted to reimplement the firmware. However, without access to the original source code, this proved to be a significant challenge that they have yet to fully overcome. Currently, the community-developed Rebble OS lacks support for much of the Pebble hardware.

Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority

The supported feature matrix for Rebble OS.

The Rebble team was not alone in its efforts to preserve the Pebble watch. Former founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky remained committed to his original vision but lacked ownership of the source code and had limited ability to support aftermarket projects. When it became apparent that Google, which acquired Pebble’s IP through its 2021 acquisition of Fitbit, had no plans to develop products based on the platform, he approached Google with a request to release the source code publicly. To his surprise, Google responded positively, and after an internal review, the company released the source code on GitHub.

The GitHub repository contains most of the source code for the Pebble operating system. The source code for the entire OS is included in this release, so functionality like notifications, media controls, fitness tracking, and support for custom apps and watchfaces can be reimplemented on Pebble watches or other ARM Cortex-M-based microcontrollers. The OS was built with FreeRTOS, so Pebble’s source code included multiple modules for memory management, graphics, and timekeeping, as well as an extensive framework to load and run custom apps written in C and Javascript. However, Google had to remove some proprietary code from the database before they could publish it. Code for chipset support and the Bluetooth stack is missing, for example, so developers will have to do a non-trivial amount of work to build new firmware updates for Pebble watches.

Nevertheless, this release should still simplify the process of pushing out new firmware updates or porting alternative operating systems to Pebble watches, as developers will no longer need to reverse-engineer how every hardware component communicates with Pebble OS. Furthermore, this release may enable the creation of new hardware running Pebble OS, an avenue that Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky confirmed to us he is currently exploring.

Developers interested in peeking at the Pebble source code can find it at the button above.

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