The Pebble smartwatch has been available to the public for nearly a year, and so far it has received mixed reactions. This is certainly an innovative product, but the app leaves much to be desired for many users.
The Pebble has a few quirks that make no sense, including no default battery meter anywhere and being unable to get rid of some useless stock watch faces.
However, custom firmware for Pebble can be downloaded and installed for free, and it’s surprisingly easy to customize and set up. It is not very simple, but if you follow the steps we have given below, you can get rid of many troubles that you may experience with your Pebble smartwatch.
What Does Custom Firmware Do?
The custom firmware that we will help you install is provided by a website called pebblesand fixes a handful of troubles. It deletes any of the default watch faces you don’t want (Pebble comes with three watch faces you can’t normally delete) and disables any of the menu items you don’t use. For example, the Pebbles menu comes stock with Music, Notifications, Alarms, and Watch Faces. Personally, I don’t use any of these menu items except Notifications, so I can get rid of Music, Alarms, and Watch Faces with custom firmware.
Custom firmware also shows the remaining battery level in the status bar when you access the menu. There is a known bug where it shows “1-” instead of “100” when the battery is full, but it’s not really a huge issue. For some reason, Pebble doesn’t show you the battery level anywhere except when the watch’s battery is running low. By then, it’s too late. There are Pebble apps you can install that show your battery level, but why use one of your precious slots when you can only include it in the firmware?
Finally, if you are experiencing certain bugs on your Pebble watch, the custom firmware comes with several patches. If you get “??????” there is a patch that can fix it so that when an incoming call comes in, it will show the contact name or just the phone number. There is also a patch that lets you use any of the buttons on the Pebble watch to launch an app. Stylish!
Instructions
For the tutorial, we’ll be using an iPhone and Dropbox app to import the custom firmware file into Pebble, but it also works on Android and many other cloud storage apps.
First, the head this web address to start. You’ll start by choosing the languages you want your Pebble watch to support. If you speak English, set that aside and scroll down and click. Otherwise, choose your native language.
The next page is where the flesh and bone is. Most of this will be self explanatory if you read and understand everything, but in case you get lost, we’ll guide you through each of the choices.
Then click on it. The next page is where you will download the .PBZ file. You can scan the QR code (only works on Android) or click the link of the file on the right to download it directly to your smartphone.
After downloading, drag and drop the file into your Dropbox folder and open the Dropbox app on your iPhone. You should see the file in the list. Tap on it to open it, but you will immediately notice that Dropbox cannot open the file. Breath! What shall we do?!
Don’t worry: Tap the Share button in the lower left corner and select .
Another popup will appear and you will select it.
You will be transferred to the Pebble app, where a warning will pop up basically telling you that only installing firmware from unverified sources may not be a good idea but you are a rebel so tap on it.
You will be taken to the next screen where you will tap the button. It will download the file and install it. When done, it will say your Pebble is “now up to date”. Tap to finish the process.
Now, once you start playing with your Pebble, you will notice some cool new changes. Hurray! There are no limitations to using custom firmware and your Pebble or Pebble app won’t notice that everything is different, which is great; You can go ahead and download more apps and use the watch as normal.
