Pebble Developer Blog

We launched the first version of our new SDK with support for Pebble Time two days into our Kickstarter campaign. Since then, we have updated it every week, releasing six iterations of our developer preview. Some of these versions included major new features like support for color in the emulator and support for the timeline. Some other features were more subtle, like the new antialiased drawing mode and the updates to the animation system. All these changes together, and a bunch more that you have not seen yet, will form the SDK that you will use to build watchfaces, watchapps and timeline apps for all models of Pebble watches in the coming months.

These updates include lots of changes, and no matter how hard we try to document everything there are a lot of unanswered questions. Some subjects have just not been addressed by the developer previews yet, some need more explaining and as always there are things we just missed in our communication efforts.

In this update, I want to answer publicly the most frequent questions received from the community in the last few weeks. I will cover components that have been released but also those that are still to come so you have the information needed to plan ahead and prepare your apps for the Pebble Time launch.

Just a few days ago, we released beta version 2.3 of our Android Application with support for actionable notifications. If you have not tested it already, enroll in our beta channel and try it out for yourself!

Notifications have always been a key use case for Pebble, and we are excited by this new feature which is going to change the way you look at notifications. With actionable notifications Pebble not only informs you about relevant events, users can now interact with them and choose from actions you as an Android developer attach to them.

When connected to an Android device, Pebble will show all wearable actions, just like any Android Wear device. While supporting wearable notifications is easy we have found that there are still a number of mobile apps who miss the opportunity to extend their reach to the wrist. Don't let your app be one of those!

In this post, we will describe what you can do with actions on wearable devices and how to add them to your Android notifications.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

The old adage applies just as well to your Pebble apps! One of the most common requests when we attend hackathons is "How do I transfer an image from the Internet to my Pebble app?".

Today we introduce a new example that demonstrates downloading a PNG file from the Internet and loading it on Pebble. We will also cover how to prepare your images so that they take as little memory as possible and load quickly on Pebble.

The code is available in our pebble-examples github account. Continue reading for more details!

Space Apps 2014 is taking place this weekend (April 12th/13th) and we are very happy to be a partner of this event. This year, the challenges include a Wearable category but we do not doubt that Pebble will find its way in a lot of the other challenges as well!

In this video we walk you through your first Pebble Watchface.

Learn how to:

• Build a Pebble app that behaves like a watchface
• Display the time and the date
• Arrange text fields on the screen
• Use the various system fonts
• Invert colors in one part of the screen

If you are new to Pebble development you are probably wondering: What does Pebble source code look like? How do I compile an app? How do I install it on my Pebble? These are all excellent questions and the answer takes less than 5 minutes to demonstrate! And we hope you will be following along on your computer!

Dear Developers,

We are celebrating the launch of the Pebble appstore on Android by announcing the Pebble App Challenge, featuring a $5000 grand prize for the first place app developer(s) and a Pebble Steel for each of the Top 16 finalists.

The Pebble App Challenge starts today. Enter your Pebble application(s) in the challenge now!

Android Beta 11 was just released. This version is a huge improvement to BETA10, it fixes the most annoying bugs in BETA10 but also improves stability considerably.

Update: A new version is available.

Dear Developers,

We just published Pebble Android 2.0 Beta 10. We are getting close to a final release and you can help by testing this build on your devices.

Update: A new version is available.

We just released a new version of Pebble Android 2.0 Beta with the Pebble appstore.

Update: A new version is available.

This morning we released the Pebble appstore for iOS. We love Android and feature parity is extremely important for us. We are releasing today a beta of the Pebble Android mobile app that includes the Pebble appstore to all developers.

This is a big day for Pebble developers and the wearable ecosystem in general! Almost one year after the first version of Pebble SDK, this morning we have released a new version of the Pebble iOS app including the Pebble appstore. For the first time in the history of wearable computing, users can browse and download third party apps: your apps.

This is an important milestone. First and foremost we want to thank you for your journey with us. In just 3 months since the first beta of SDK 2 you have blown us away with your talent and creativity!

Attention developers! Pebble SDK 2.0 BETA7 just landed on the developer site! Go get it now and do read the release notice. iOS users will need to delete any existing Pebble app before they can upgrade.

Another week and another release of Pebble SDK 2.0. In this version you will find that the iOS application now includes the Pebble appstore and will give you a chance to see how your application looks and feels with the new store. If you had a 1.x application, you should also make sure that the automatic upgrade works properly for your app.

In our post on JavaScript Tips and Tricks we strongly recommended the use of JSLint or JSHint to help you detect JavaScript problems at compile time.

We believe JSHint can really increase the quality of your code and we will probably enforce JSHint correct-ness for all the apps on the appstore very soon. In this post we show you how to setup jshint and integrate it in your Pebble development process.

I love working on the plane. It is one of those rare place where I can spend 8 hours coding without being disturbed by emails, phone, etc. Here are a few tips to write Pebble apps in the air.

Busy times for the Pebble elves! Beta3 last week, the app store announcement on wednesday and now a new BETA! Pebble SDK BETA4 is available on our website now. Existing iOS developers will receive an email with a link to install it; if you are not on that list yet, please fill the form to request it.

We are extremely excited to announce the Pebble appstore! Many of you, as developers, have asked for it and we are happy to announce that it will go live with Pebble SDK 2.0 early next year.

Pebble appstore will be included in the official Pebble smartphone application and will be the first place where Pebble users look for Pebble apps. For developers, the Pebble appstore is the best way to promote and distribute your Pebble applications to users.

On september 25th, the Pebble User Group met at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View to discuss two-way communication with Pebble SDK.

The slides are now available for everyone to enjoy - just after the break!

It seems the summer days are only increasing the energy of Pebble developers! There were lots of new watchfaces announced on the forums this week. It's getting hard to try all of them!

Watchfaces are a very visible part of the work they are doing but they are also inventing new ways to use the Pebble SDK. Featured this week: how to take screenshots of your apps, getting facebook and twitter on your wrist (for iOS and Android), wearing barcodes and paying your respect to an old Chinese custom!

(2014 09: This article was updated to add links for SDK 2.0 users and add the resource identifier of the fonts as suggested by Timothy Gray in the comments.)

Just like any modern platform, typography is a very important element of Pebble user interface. As Designers and Developers, you have the choice to use one of Pebble system fonts or to embed your own.

Pebble system fonts were chosen for their readability and excellent quality on Pebble black & white display, it's a good idea to know them well before choosing to embed your own.

We love seeing what you guys are doing with the Pebble SDK! Every day there is more amazing apps that pushes the limit of what we thought was possible and contributes to #makeawesomehappen.

Here is a selection of the apps that caught our attention this week. Developers, please let us know about your apps in the forums or on twitter - And if you make a great video like most of the apps shown this week, it's even easier for us to help you!

Pebble firmware 1.12 was released earlier this week. The changelog announced "lots of goodies for watchapp developers" and many of you are curious to see what they are!