Hey Community,
The world is full of apps, but almost none of them are built around you. They’re designed for everyone, which often means they’re perfect for no one.
Essential Apps explores a different idea. What if your phone could create apps shaped exactly around your life? What if you could describe what you need and the app simply appears on your home screen, ready to use?
Playground launched last September with the early Alpha version of the Essential Apps Builder as an internal and limited community release. We gave a small group of early adopters access to help us test the Apps Builder for the first time and validate that personal apps could be created through simple language.
Today, we’re entering Beta.
What Beta means
Beta is when Essential Apps begin rolling out to a wider group of users. Access is expanding gradually through a waitlist, with users added in batches. Thousands of you have already joined, and we’re bringing more people in as we go.
This lets us see real-world usage, gather feedback at scale and improve reliability before the public release later this year.
How you build them
The Essential Apps Builder lives inside Playground. You describe what you want in plain language and our AI-powered Apps Builder creates it. When you edit something, only those specific parts update. Your app stays stable and gets more reliable over time.
When you update an app now, it doesn’t reset. The Builder changes only what you asked for and keeps the rest intact. And if an update goes wrong, you can restore an earlier version in one click.
Once it’s ready, one tap deploys it to your phone. It appears instantly on your home screen.
What’s improved in the Apps Builder
Publishing and updates are easier to understand now. It’s always clear what’s live, what’s still in draft and what has changed. Clearer project states, better organisation and dark mode support.
About Playground
Playground is where you build, explore and share Essential Apps. It lives on the web for now, where you can browse community creations, publish your own and install them to your device. A native Playground app is coming.
Playground brings all of Nothing’s creative tools together. Glyph Toys, Camera Presets, EQ Profiles. Ideas can move easily between creation and sharing.
The bigger picture
Essential Apps are one part of the Essential Suite of AI Tools, which also includes Essential Space, Essential Search and Essential Memory.
Essential Space helps you capture ideas quickly.
Essential Search gives you direct answers without opening apps.
Essential Memory recalls helpful details from what you’ve captured.
Software should adapt to how you think, not force you to adapt to how it works.
Why Phone (3) goes first
Early Beta is exclusive to Phone (3) because it has the performance to run multiple Essential Apps while we refine the system. Starting here lets us validate behaviour and iron out issues before expanding to other devices.
As Beta stabilises, Essential Apps will roll out to Nothing and CMF devices running Nothing OS 4.0 and above.
What you can build today
Essential Apps fully support three permissions. Location, Calendar (read only) and Contacts.
That means you can build location-based reminders, agenda views, meeting countdowns and one-tap contact widgets.
More capabilities are coming, including camera and microphone access, network fetching, notifications, vibration, calling and Bluetooth. They exist but we’re preparing them for stable release.
A late February OS update will unlock activity recognition, usage statistics, sensor data and our first system Weather API.
Visuals and widget sizes
Essential Apps support image uploads today. JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP. Icons, audio and custom fonts are coming in a future Beta update.
We’re also rolling out a refreshed design baseline to improve spacing, typography, tap areas, accessibility and dark mode consistency.
Widget sizes available today are 2×2 and 4×2. The 1×2 and 4×4 sizes will arrive in a future Beta update.
When this goes public
Essential Apps will move to public release later this year once system integrations are stable and device compatibility is confirmed. Remixing apps directly inside Playground will also arrive then.
Throughout Beta, the platform will continue to gain deeper system integrations, expanded design capabilities and broader device support.
How to think about Essential Apps
Essential Apps explore a different way to use your phone.
Instead of opening apps and navigating menus, small personal apps stay visible, update in place, and respond to your context. Your home screen becomes more purposeful. Your phone feels like it’s actually yours.
Some ideas will feel simple in Beta. Some will feel unfinished. That’s expected. We’re focused on reliability and learning how people actually use personal tools in everyday life.
Where this is going
Essential is not about replacing Nothing OS. It’s about making Nothing OS more personal.
As this grows across more devices, the knowledge built through Essential will create experiences that feel tailored. A calmer, more adaptive layer of intelligence that makes technology feel closer and more meaningful.
This is how Nothing is moving personal technology forward.
