Pebble Time with Michael
This is Part 2 of a two-part article. Part 1 appears here.
The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of of the key features of the Pebble Time (and, of course, the upcoming Pebble Time Steel) smartwatch, along with a set of tips on how to make the best use of them. It’s primarily written for prospective and new Pebble Time owners, but more experienced users may also find a tip or two of value here. Please feel free to add any additional tips you would like to share in the comments section below this article.
Settings Screen
The Pebble Time Settings screen controls many of the operating features of the watch. It’s accessed from the watch face by pressing the Middle button and then pressing the Up button followed again by the Middle button. You can exit out of Settings and return to the watch face by pressing the Back button, located on the left side of the watch.
Most of the Settings entries are obvious in their usage, but a few deserve some further elaboration:
Notifications: Within this setting you can set a Do Not Disturb time which will prevent your Pebble Time from vibrating during this time period. It’s a great idea to check this setting and align it with your personal sleeping habits! Also, you can adjust the Vibration strength to your liking. I have mine set to High.
Quick Launch: This is a real gem of a feature available in the Pebble Time. It allows you to associate applications with a long press of the Up and Down buttons. Each button will have an individual app associated with it. Pressing and holding down one of these buttons while the watch face screen is showing will immediately launch its associated application. My watch is currently set up to launch the Simple Weather app with a long press of the Up button and the PlexFit app with a long press of the Down button.
Display: The Backlight Intensity and Timeout periods can be set here. I strongly recommend that you set the Timeout to at least 5 seconds. That’s the setting I use. I think the default setting of 3 seconds is way too short. I also have Intensity set to High. It can be set to Blinding, if you prefer! Neither of these settings seems to have affected my Pebble Time’s battery life in any significant manner.
System: This setting enables you to turn off your smartwatch, or even to do a complete Factory Reset on it. Both of these functions are very handy if your watch ever starts acting strangely and resetting your phone doesn’t correct the problem. Turning your Pebble Time back on after is has been Shut Down is done by pressing the Back button on the left side of the watch.
Notifications
Notifications form the heart of the true usefulness of the Pebble Time. Notifications cause the watch to vibrate and display alert messages whenever some event of interest to you occurs on your phone. They allow you to quickly take action on important events and temporarily ignore events that aren’t urgent. The exact Notifications you receive on your Pebble Time is configurable by you on your phone.
Normal Notification configuration takes places in the Pebble Time application on your phone. There is a Notification section in this program that allows you to pick and choose which programs and events on your phone will trigger a Notification on your Pebble Time. However, you may find that an additional Notification Manager application may need to also be installed on your phone. I did.
The reason I have the Pebble Notifier application installed on my Samsung Galaxy is that I found that the Notification function of the Pebble Time phone application simply doesn’t work with all of the programs that I have on my phone. One specific example is Life Reminders. This is an Android reminder application that I use all the time on my phone. I want it to trigger Notifications on my Pebble Time when reminders come due in this program. However, I never receive any Notifications from Life Reminders if it is just enabled within the Pebble Time phone application. However, specifying this program within Pebble Notifier allows this program’s Notifications to actually appear on my watch. Pebble Notifier also allows you to filter out certain Notifications from being sent to your Pebble Time based on words or regular expressions applied against each one.
One tip on Notifications: choose wisely which program send them to your Pebble Time. Too many Notifications arriving on your watch will be both distracting and will reduce battery life. Really think about what you actually need to know about that’s happening on your phone.
Apps
There are literally thousands of apps available for the Pebble Time. You can download them from the same Pebble App Store where you also find watch faces. They are downloaded to your smartwatch in exactly the same manner. The Pebble App Store can be a little daunting to navigate as there are so many apps in it. Pebble does organize them into a few handy categories, but it still can be difficult to find what you want there. Pebble App Store categories that should be of particular interest to Pebble Time owners include Color Picks, Timeline-Ready Apps, and Pebble Time Apps.
One Pebble App Store tip: if you want to access and search it from a computer or tablet instead of using the Pebble Time phone application, you can do so through a Web browser and this URL. You won’t be able to download apps or watch faces to your Pebble Time from there, but I find it to be a very handy way to quickly to look around and see what’s available in the Pebble App Store.
One important fact to keep in mind: although most apps will work for both Android and iPhone users, some apps will only work with one or the other phone. Be sure to check out the app description and look for the appropriate Android or iPhone logos on apps you are interested in using.
Since there are so many apps available, a good place to start researching them is Must Have Apps to Get Started With Your Pebble Time. For a summary of the apps I happen to be using right now on my Pebble Time, see Why iPhone Users Needn’t Feel Jealous of Android Pebble Time Users. My own personal absolute favorite app right now is Nav Me, which is only available to Android users. My favorite app that’s available for use with both phone types is ESPN.
Wraps and Bands
Although the Pebble Time looks pretty nice right out to the box, it’s inevitable that at least some of the owners will want their watches to have a more customized look in order to further personalize them. As you can see from the pictures in this article, I certainly did! Compare the picture to the right against all the other pictures in this article . The picture here shows what my Pebble Time used to look like before I added a new watch band and wrap to it.
By the way, wraps can also be referred to as skins. In either case, they are made from an extremely high-grade durable vinyl and stick to your watch. They both protect it from scratches and to enhance its appearance. They may also come with additional wraps for covering the Pebble Time’s buttons, or even a clear screen protector.
A very good source of further information on wraps is Best Pebble Time Skins (Update 14.07.2015). The wrap that appears on my Pebble Time happens to be made by Slickwraps. dbrand is another excellent source of very high-quality wraps.
Bands are simpler. The Pebble Time takes a standard 22mm watch band. One thing to keep in mind, though. The Pebble Time comes standard with quick-release watch band posts. If you buy a new band for it that doesn’t support quick-release posts, make sure you also get a set of standard 22mm watch band posts in otder to be able to attach the new band to your watch.
The watch band I bought for my Pebble Time is a somewhat unusual one. It’s a NATO-style band. You can find more information about it here: A Truly Different Watch Band for the Pebble Time – NATO Band.
I actually bought my watch band first, and then added the wrap to match up with its color scheme. There are many, many wraps and even more watch bands available for the Pebble Time. They can really help personalize the watch to your own particular taste.