10 essential apps for your Pebble smartwatch
The Pebble smartwatch is out in the UK today – and there’s already a tonne of great apps available on the platform. Here’s our pick of the ten best.
Twebble
Want to check your tweets whilst lying in bed? Twebble will let you view your timeline and even post tweets using a keyboard controlled by the three buttons – yes, it is exactly as fiddly as it sounds but it is some impressive engineering.
Skipstone
There are lots of different remote apps available for Pebble that will let you control different devices but Skipstone does it best. It’s compatible with a wide range of different media players, including VLC, Plex, XBMC and WDTV – and it will support multiple remotes at the same time. Meaning you can use your watch to pause your film whatever app it is playing on.
Getting things configured can be a little tricky, depending on how your media player is configured, but if you know what an IP address is, you should be fine.
PebbGPS
Want to navigate somewhere without getting your phone out? PebbGPS astonishingly manages to squeeze maps on to your Pebble’s screen and will direct you on where to go. Brilliant for cycling when you phone is stuck in your pocket.
RunKeeper
A wrist-based companion to the popular exercise app, RunKeeper will let you keep an eye on lap times and other vital analytics straight from your wrist – so no need to faff about with your phone.
[/nextpage] [nextpage title=”Next”]
GoPro by Pebble
When you’re standing on top of a mountain about the snowboard down, or whatever extreme activity it is that you’re doing, taking the GoPro from your helmet might be a bit fiddly. Luckily, GoPro by Pebble makes life easier by making starting and stopping recording a breeze – all you have to do is tap the button on the side of you watch (with your phone acting as the middleman, of course).
PblCamera
If you’re looking to take the perfect photo and have no one to take it, this could be the perfect app for you. Astonishingly, it manages to crunch down the view from your phone’s camera and display it (or rather, a Game Boy-camera style interpretation of the image) on your Pebble’s display. This means that you can place your phone 20 feet away, and rather than having to hit timer and dash back you can instead make sure everyone is in shot using your watch, before triggering the shutter via the watch. It works for both photos and videos.
Smart Status
Smart Status is a highly configurable dashboard that will give you all of the details you want at a glance. All you have to do use the companion app to pick what you want to display – such as weather, your calendar or even the time and it’ll have them all there ready for you, without you having to scroll through menus into other apps to get the same information.
UK Transport
Get train times, bus arrival and tube data (if you’re in the right part of the country) all on your wrist. No need to get out your phone at the bus stop to see how long the wait will be. Brilliant – especially if you live in an area where waving around an iPhone 6 late at night might not be a wise idea.
Kronos
Perhaps a little niche, but if you have a Sonos music system and a Pebble, you need to get Kronos, which lets you control your music straight from your watch. Brilliant for when you want to skip track mid-washing up, and also useful as a quick-glance “now playing” widget.
Tiny Bird
Okay so maybe not essential, but definitely inevitable: Someone has ported Flappy Bird to Pebble, so now you can get angry at the game, with no risk of throwing your phone across the room in anger.
[/nextpage]
