Request: "DumbWatch Mode"

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Hey Pebble Community,

I’m really looking forward to wearing my new Pebble Time 2 and I am wearing my old Time Steel since it now works like a charm with the new app!

It’s simply amazing! Even my son (10) finally started wearing a watch, since I offered him my old original Pebble, paired with his iPad.

And there came the Feature idea… Let’s call it „Dumbwatch" or „Beachmode" or something fun like that :wink:

It basically means, that I have the watch turn into a normal, digital watch that doesn’t always rely on the phone, without making it feel like something is missing.

First, who is this for? My two scenarios are Kids and Vacation (for now). My Kids would love to wear an amazing cool watch, like a pebble. But they don’t have phones and I’m not planning to buy them in the near future. So what if, they could get a pebble watch, set it up with MY phone or their iPad (that they obviously don’t carry around all the time) and then use the watch like a regular, feature rich watch.

The same goes for a vacation or a trip, where you DON’T want to bring your phone and be available, but you DO want to bring your favourite watch without it reminding you constantly that something isn’t working. It’s all working, I didn’t bring my phone on purpose :wink:

It could mean something like blocking certain apps that always need the internet, like weather. Or it could mean that those apps like weather will load 24 or 48 hours worth of information onto the watch, so it works offline as well.

You could reimplement the app Limit from the past and have the watch load all those top 5 or 10 Apps onto the watch when the „Beachmode" is enabled. Nothing is worse than trying to open an app that you haven’t opened for a while just to find out, it’s not yet on your watch and your phone is too far away :wink:

Anyway, my simple reasoning is, in those busy times I don’t want to always have to bring my phone, but I always want to bring my pebble. And of course I can do that now already, but the experience could be a little better in those cases, where I left my phone on purpose (probably something unimaginable a few years back… :wink: )

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This seems like it’s in the overlap between ‘this is a legit need for a feature’ and ‘not enough demand for it to happen’ :confused:

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it might! But shouldn’t it be “easy”? It’s basically no “new” thing, but just a purposeful limit on the watch (that is already there anyways)…

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Related, I would like to see the ability to check a box in my Locker next to apps that I want to always be loaded on the watch.

Being able to say “This app/face should always be on the watch, no matter how long it’s been since I opened it” would go a long way towards making “beach mode” or “dumbwatch mode” just a matter of user behavior.

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Well, until I read the initial post I was actually expecting that the pebble would not need an iPhone around to function. Actually shocked a bit that this is not the case. I´m not always having my iPhone with me. So what exactly happens to the pebble, if the phone is not near it? (Can´t test it myself, since my Time2 did not arrive yet).

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Well, on the one hand, things like weather don’t work, since they need an internet connection. And then there is the thing with apps that “float” from phone to watch. Like on a mac or iphone now, the watch only loads the apps onto the watch itself, that you actually use. There is no controlling that manually. So when you don’t use an app for a while, it might get offloaded from the watch while still showing up in the app browser (on phone and watch). Now when you’re not connected and try to open that app, it won’t work because it needs to download from the phone. Many years ago there was a set number of apps or watchfaces that you could install on the watch because of that “limited space” reason. Then they switched for the “load it from the phone when needed = no more limits” model. Which makes sense when you always have your phone around. Who could have known that people in 2026 don’t always want to have their phone around anymore…:wink:

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OK, thank you for the clarification. So if I don´t need weather and only have one or two watchfaces, I guess I can use the Pebble as a dumbwatch even if I leave the phone at home.

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