Gadgetbridge

Gadgetbridge is an open-source app that, in its README’s words, lets you “use your Bluetooth gadgets (mostly wearables like smart watches, but many more) without the vendor’s closed source application and without the need to create an account and transmit any of your data to the vendor’s servers.” It is developed by the Freeyourgadget community on Codeberg. It isn’t on Google Play: a maintainer explained that there is “no manpower to publish on Play store and to fight with their policies”. The version there, Bangle.js Gadgetbridge, is a separate edition with internet access.

What it works with

The project’s website listed 630 gadget models from 86 makers on 10 October 2026, among them 444 watches and bands from brands like Amazfit, Xiaomi, Huawei and Honor, Garmin, Fossil, Pebble, Casio, Polar and Withings, plus headphones, bike computers, smart rings, scales and more. Support varies by model: the site marks gadgets as working well, working partially or only pairing, so check yours on gadgetbridge.org before you rely on it.

Depending on the gadget, Gadgetbridge can:

• show your phone’s notifications, incoming calls and messages on your wrist, and reply from the gadget;
• collect steps, sleep, heart rate, stress, workouts and other sensor data, with charts and a dashboard;
• control music on the phone, show weather and navigation directions, take photos remotely and find your phone;
• install watch faces and firmware files that you provide.

Pairing, and when you still need the maker’s app

Many gadgets pair directly in Gadgetbridge. Some don’t: their makers encrypt the connection with a key negotiated through the maker’s servers. The pairing guide says it is “in most of these cases simply impossible to add your device to Gadgetbridge unless you provide a valid authentication key”, which you usually get by pairing once with the official app.

• Newer Xiaomi and Amazfit gadgets need that one-time pairing with the official app (see the questions below). A factory reset changes the gadget’s Bluetooth address, and you need a new key.
• Fossil Hybrid HR and Nothing CMF watches also need the official app once.
• Huawei and Honor watches “can be paired without the need for the official app”.
• Garmin watches pair directly, but weather and GPS-assistance updates on the watch expect credentials from Garmin; Gadgetbridge can send fake ones, with the warning not to enable this if you plan to use Garmin’s app, which may then need a factory reset.

Your data stays on the phone

Activity and health data go into a local database. You can export everything as a zip and import it again, export automatically on a schedule (the database, GPX tracks or FIT files), and sync to Health Connect, Android’s on-device health store; the documentation stresses that “no data is sent to external servers (even to Google) through this integration”. Home Assistant can read your steps from there. Other apps and scripts can control Gadgetbridge through an intent interface you switch on in the developer options.

What goes online

Nothing. Gadgetbridge declares no internet permission, and its build removes it even if one of its libraries asks for it. The documentation: “If it isn’t installed or allowed, nothing changes, Gadgetbridge remains absolutely offline”, referring to the one way to add internet access: the separate Internet Helper add-on app. With the add-on, you can allow things like the Pebble and Bangle.js app stores and internet access for watch apps; all of these are off by default.

Even then, the code blocks every request to Garmin’s servers, and answers a Garmin watch’s request for satellite data with a file you downloaded yourself. Weather comes from weather apps on the phone, and the map download option only opens a web page in your browser.

Permissions

There are 74, because Gadgetbridge takes over jobs the maker’s app would do:

• Bluetooth, and location, which Android requires for finding Bluetooth devices; in the background, because, as the documentation explains, the scan runs in a background task. Location also gives watches GPS data for workouts and sunrise and sunset times.
• Phone, SMS, contacts and calendar, to show who is calling or writing, reply and answer calls from the gadget, and copy calendar events to it.
• Camera for taking photos from the gadget, and do-not-disturb control.
• 24 Health Connect permissions, all for writing data to it, none for reading.
• Permissions defined by other apps, which do nothing unless those apps are installed: weather providers, CoMaps navigation, the Catima and FossWallet card wallets, Termux, and the Internet Helper.

About this file

• This is the developer’s own build of Gadgetbridge 0.95.1, from 9 October 2026, through IzzyOnDroid: the same file, byte for byte, as the APK on the project’s Codeberg releases, signed with the project’s key (certificate SHA-256 01cce931…bc7be). IzzyOnDroid’s checker confirms it can be rebuilt from source to the same file.
• F-Droid publishes each version twice, once signed by the developer and once by F-Droid. This file updates installs signed by the developer; over F-Droid’s own signature, you have to uninstall first, so export your data before you do. F-Droid hadn’t published 0.95.1 yet when we checked.
• 0.95.1 only fixed build reproducibility. 0.95.0, a day earlier, added 15 new and 8 experimental devices, redesigned the charts, workout details and device list, and added blood pressure and hydration to Health Connect, among other changes.
• The 22.0 MB file runs on ARM and x86 phones and needs Android 6.0 or later. Our scan found no trackers.
• The screenshots are the project’s own, from October 2024, before the redesign in 0.95.0.
• Gadgetbridge is licensed under the AGPL-3.0; the project’s icons are mostly CC BY-SA 4.0. The source code for this version is at https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/src/tag/0.95.1.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).