One of Nothing’s boldest ideas, Essential Apps, is now available for Phone 3 users, unlocking a new way to create highly personalized, AI-generated widgets for your home screen without any coding wizardry.
The feature, currently rolling out in beta through the web-based Nothing Playground platform, is an early step toward the company’s long-term vision of an AI-native operating system called Essential OS.
What can Essential Apps do?
But what is Essential Apps anyway? Think of it as tiny yet useful tools that do very specific things for users, in the form of a widget.
Want a widget that can track your water intake? Or one that finds the highest-rated restaurants in the locality (could be very useful if you travel around)? Well, the promise here is that you can create personalized widgets that perform specific tasks (tailored to your daily requirements) without writing a single line of code.
Nothing’s own example includes a widget that finds the best days and time to run outside (taking into consideration the weather and calendar).
You should only have to describe what you want in a simple text-based command (the widget’s purpose, what it does, its size, etc.), and Nothing Playground should take care of the rest.
Essential Apps can only access three device permissions for now
You can even change or edit the widget’s design or functionality after creating it. The widgets can access information from the internet as well, so that’s a plus point.
For now, the Essential Apps can access three different permissions from your smartphone: Location, Calendar, and Contacts. So, you should be able to create location or calendar-based reminders, countdowns, and one-tap navigation widgets.
In the future, the widgets should be able to access additional permissions, including camera, microphone, notifications, calling, vibration, and Bluetooth.
As mentioned in the beginning, the Nothing Essentials Apps Beta is currently available to Phone 3 users via a waitlist. However, the company should extend support to more devices running Nothing OS 4.0 in the near future.