Pebble smartwatches could soon become even better alternatives to the Apple Watch and Pixel Watch thanks to a new series of plugins that Pebble founder and Core Devices CEO Eric Migicovsky says will be integrated into the wearable’s SDK. The new plugins will work “a bit like Apple Watch complications,” Migicovsky writes on Bluesky, but with even more flexibility and uses that extend to Core Devices’ Index smart ring, too.

Pebble devs – we're working on something big for you 👀The biggest change to the SDK since…forever. Plugins: headless apps that provide data (eg weather, finance, traffic) or offer actions (home control, music, webhooks) to other apps, watchfaces and the Index agent.

In the past, if a Pebble watch face developer wanted to include functionality that went beyond telling the time (like showing the current weather, for example), they had to hard-code that functionality (and the APIs that make it possible) into the watch face itself. Migicovsky says the new plugin system will enable developers to avoid that step and instead call on plugins that run locally in the Pebble app. These essentially work as mini-apps that can pull information from services already running on your smartphone, like Apple’s Notes or Reminders apps, or take action, like adjusting a connected smart home device.

The change should be an improvement for Core Devices’ smart ring, as well. ” Pulling up information and taking action through local plugins will also be more secure than the web-based Model Context Protocol ( MCP ) integration that Core Devices offers on current Index rings, according to Migicovsky.

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