Light Phone Is Making Its Dumb Phone More Useful With Third-Party ‘Tools’

Time and time again, owners of dumb phones—or minimalist phones—turn 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 from their lives, but turns out we still need apps.

“I cannot tell you how many people come back to us saying that, ‘Hey, if only you had this thing for QR code scanning; if only you had this localized app,’ that they'd be able to use the Light Phone more often," Kaiwei Tang, CEO and cofounder of Light Phone, tells WIRED. “We're a smaller team, we're not Apple. We don't have app stores with millions of apps.”

But now the Brooklyn company is taking a step to close that gap. Light Phone is launching a developer program in May for LightOS, the operating system powering its new Light Phone III. Now anyone interested in the platform can more easily create “Tools” they want to use on the phone.

Courtesy of Light Phone

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 or the Mudita Kompakt. 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 like turn-by-turn directions. The latest iteration, the Light Phone III, greatly modernized the hardware while staying true to its bare-bones nature.

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.

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, including a Spotify client, an app to store passes—like gym membership cards—and even an app to check bus and train schedules.

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.

“This is an invitation for a lot of users we've heard from over the years who haven't made the plunge because they want this kind of customization,” says Joe Hollier, cofounder of Light Phone. “In light of Android locking down its platform even further for developers, this is a great opportunity to kind of do the opposite.”

Hollier is referring to a recent announcement from Google that it will require developers who publish their apps outside of the Play Store to submit verification, citing security reasons. It will require them to provide their real names while paying a fee to Google, changing the open nature of side loading apps to Android phones, which is when you install an app from an unofficial source.

Light Phone will do its own vetting for its official Tool Library—what Light calls its app store of sorts, launching this fall—though it's completely optional whether a developer wants their Tool to be part of the official roster. Light Phone owners will be able to browse the Tool Library and install vetted apps, though if one of these tools isn't allowed in (or doesn't choose to be a part of the Library), users still have the option to enable a developer mode to side load whatever they want.

Courtesy of Light Phone

“If someone creates a Tool that doesn't feel aligned, we're not going to bless it in our library,” Hollier says. That could be because the Tool goes against the idea of a minimal phone, for security reasons, or even legal reasons. Hosting a Spotify client on its platform, for example, could land the company in legal hot water.

While some users have also clamored for a way to check emails, Light may still not approve it for the Tool Library, as that's what smartphones are for. That said, Tang says there are different ways to build email tools that are less noisy and distracting, so he's excited to see the creative possibilities.

Tang says the Tool Library differs considerably from the app stores run by Google and Apple. There are no ads, and the company doesn't sell people's data. The Tools are all free, though the company may add a way to tip creators. The team also wants to make developing for LightOS simple enough that you do not need to be a veteran app developer to build a Tool, and it could even be a great way for kids to get some experience building apps, parents permitting.

So what kinds of Tools could you expect to see? Hollier says he's already seen the community build apps like guitar tuners, metronomes, trail apps for hikers, and even a weather app. You can imagine that with official support, it'll be easier to get those on your own device through the Tool Library, if the company approves them. Other things people have been asking for include two-factor authentication apps and public transit apps. Light is also building new first-party Tools to test the developer kit, including a Signal Tool that would allow Light Phone III owners to use the encrypted messaging client.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

As for the Light Phone III itself, Tang says tariffs last year slowed the phone's launch, but the company is getting to a moment this summer where it will have inventory to ship immediately to anyone who purchases one. (Until now, it has been selling out immediately.)

“What we're seeing on a user basis is that the retention is much higher than the Light Phone II, meaning that a user who tries to go light with the Light Phone III is having more success because of the bigger screen, camera, improved functionality, and some of the features we've rolled out,” Hollier says. “It's really encouraging.”

But success in using a minimal phone depends on the user's motivation, as pointed out in a Stanford University study published this April, conducted with Light Phone II models. The researchers found that people switching to a minimal phone effectively reduced phone and social media use, but only high-interest volunteers motivated to participate “showed significant within-person changes in psychological well-being, reporting reduced stress, increased life satisfaction, and less FoMo.”