So you’ve just got a brand spanking new Pebble Time. Congratulations! Now you’ll want to get some cool apps and watch faces to create your own custom experience. With Pebble Time it’s a piece of cake! Just go into the Pebble Time app and tap either Get Apps or Get Watchfaces. Now you’ve done that, you’ve probably realised there are a gajillion apps and watchfaces out there, and not all of them are good. “If only someone would make a top five list of the best apps and watchfaces,” I hear you cry. Well, you’re in luck! Here are my five recommendations.
1/ Twebble – Jorge Izquierdo
It’s Twitter. On your wrist. There’s not much to say about it really. Twebble hasn’t been optimized for the Pebble Time yet but it still works great in monochrome as a way of viewing your timeline at a glance. I wouldn’t bother trying to type out a tweet though as you need to use the buttons on the side of the watch and it is an arduous task to say the least. I’m hopeful of a Pebble Time colour update and hopefully one that works with the microphone for voice-to-text tweeting.
2/ Battery+ – Ycleptic Studios
Battery+ is a simple way to see how long your Pebble Time has been on for since its last charge and, more importantly, how long the battery is going to last before you need to charge it. Battery+ is timelilne optimized meaning it will insert into your timeline the recommended day by which you should have charged your watch. Very handy! On top of this, there is a load of battery usage data you can access and it’s all displayed very clearly.
3/ News Headlines – Chris Lewis
News Headlines is, for my money, the best app to access BBC News headlines on your Pebble Time. You can set how many stories it shows you and you can tell it to only get stories from certain categories e.g. Science and Technology, Entertainment, Sports, etc. The app doesn’t give you the full story to read through on your Pebble but it does give you the headline, the picture, and the opening paragraph which, for me, is normally enough to get the gist of a story but if you want the full details you’ll have to go on your phone.
4/ Weather Land – reno
This is my watchface of choice. Weather Land matches the time and temperature of the geographical area you are in and displays a colourful representation of it on your watch. The watchface tells you the time, the date, and the temperature in a very easy on the eye format making it my number one, go-to watchface for everyday use.
5/ Misfit – Misfit & Up – Jawbone
I’ve tied these two together as I think a lot of people might be using the Pebble Time as a fitness tracker as well as a watch and these two are the best ways of tracking your movement, I’ve found. You’ll find Misfit under the Apps section but, rather confusingly, Up by Jawbone is found in the Watchface section. Misfit and Jawbone are both monochromatic, not making use of the Time’s colour display, but both are fantastic at tracking the right kind of info and both link up with their respective apps giving you access to all manner of sleep and activity data. Word of warning though, Jawbone maintain that the Pebble is not as accurate as one of their fitness trackers (they would say that though, wouldn’t they?) and there are discrepancies between data captured from a Pebble and an Up device but they are minor and shouldn’t impact too much on your overall use. Personally, I love the Up app, the infographics are clean and very easy to understand and adding activities/exercise and food is simple and quick allowing you to log it and get on with your life. Just remember, with in order for it to be on and tracking, Jawbone p must be your active watchface otherwise it won’t collect any data!
Honourable mentions: Pip Boy 100 – Bert de Ruiter, Enigma – Neal Patel, Timer+ – Ycleptic Studios
Honourable mentions towards the Pip Boy 100 watchface that mimics the device found in the Fallout series of videogames, the Enigma watchface that is a very cool looking code-breaking, Bletchley Park-esque visualisation of the date and time, and Timer+ which I think is the best Pebble Time stop watch in the market.
So there you go. My five favourite/most used watchfaces and apps from the Pebble store. Disagree with my list? Have others that would recommend? Let me know in the comments below.