{"id":463278,"date":"2026-05-01T13:38:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/463278\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T13:38:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:38:40","slug":"light-phone-is-making-its-dumb-phone-more-useful-with-third-party-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/463278\/","title":{"rendered":"Light Phone Is Making Its Dumb Phone More Useful With Third-Party \u2018Tools\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time and time again, owners of dumb phones<\/a>\u2014or minimalist phones\u2014turn to their niche communities asking for extra features for their pared-down devices: an authenticator app, Uber, or a way to view hiking trails. They turned to these phones to reduce the time spent staring at a smartphone screen and cut the anxiety driven by the modern attention economy<\/a> from their lives, but turns out we still need apps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot tell you how many people come back to us saying that, \u2018Hey, if only you had this thing for QR code scanning; if only you had this localized app,\u2019 that they’d be able to use the Light Phone more often,” Kaiwei Tang, CEO and cofounder of Light Phone, tells WIRED. \u201cWe’re a smaller team, we’re not Apple. We don’t have app stores with millions of apps.\u201d<\/p>\n

But now the Brooklyn company is taking a step to close that gap. Light Phone is launching a developer program<\/a> in May for LightOS, the operating system powering its new Light Phone III<\/a>. Now anyone interested in the platform can more easily create \u201cTools\u201d they want to use on the phone.<\/p>\n

\"Moving<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Light Phone<\/p>\n

Light Phone is one of the more prominent companies in the niche minimal phone market, which saw many new players in 2025, like the Minimal Phone<\/a> or the Mudita Kompakt<\/a>. Light has been making its utility-focused devices since 2014 for people who feel overly reliant on technology. The first Light Phone could only make and receive phone calls, and the second added perks<\/a> like turn-by-turn directions. The latest iteration, the Light Phone III<\/a>, greatly modernized the hardware while staying true to its bare-bones nature.<\/p>\n

But for the people who still want their basic dumb phone to do that one little extra thing, the ability to add Tools is good news.<\/p>\n

The Light Phone community has already been modding and hacking the company’s hardware. While Light only offers a handful of first-party Tools, such as a Calculator, Alarm, Calendar, and Podcasts, community members have made their own<\/a>, including a Spotify client, an app to store passes\u2014like gym membership cards\u2014and even an app to check bus and train schedules.<\/p>\n

Now, with an official software developer kit, it will be much easier for interested parties to make the apps they want. You don’t even need a Light Phone III to create a Tool for the platform, though these third-party Tools are only available on the latest handset, not older Light Phone models.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Time and time again, owners of dumb phones\u2014or minimalist phones\u2014turn to their niche communities asking for extra features…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[257],"tags":[1307,11160,18,282,19,17,279,1309,9298,797,82],"class_list":["post-463278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-apps","tag-developers","tag-eire","tag-gadgets","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mobile","tag-phones","tag-screen-time","tag-shopping","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116499599473448535","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}