Nothing’s “Essential Apps” let you build personalized widgets with text-based prompts

Instead of downloading apps you'll never open again, Nothing wants you to generate tiny tools on demand, powered by AI and shaped entirely around your habits.

By Shikhar Mehrotra Published February 10, 2026

Nothing Essential Apps Beta. — Nothing/X

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.

Create apps shaped exactly around your specific needs and context.

That’s what Essential Apps are.

You describe what you need. AI builds it. It appears on your phone’s home screen, ready to use.

One billion apps for one billion people.

Beta starts today on Nothing Playground. pic.twitter.com/tgqi0aq64r
— Essential (@essential) February 10, 2026

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.

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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.

We were promised there would be “an app for that” and for a while, it felt true. But open app stores gradually gave way to the same few default apps and platforms – built by a handful of companies, for billions of people at once.

Essential Apps start from a different belief:… https://t.co/oOZiTRD6uL
— Carl Pei (@getpeid) February 10, 2026

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.

Shikhar Mehrotra

News Writer

For more than five years, Shikhar has consistently simplified developments in the field of consumer tech and presented them…

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