Meta rolled out Pocket, its AI-powered app for creating and sharing interactive games, to users across the United States in August 2026. The app had quietly launched in Brazil last month as a test market before the broader U.S. release.
Pocket lets users generate small, interactive games — called “gizmos” — by entering AI prompts. The resulting experiences respond to touch and phone tilt, play sound effects, and can include music clips, photos from a user’s camera roll, or live camera access. Finished games are published to a scrollable feed, where other users can save, remix, or repost them.
The app is built on technology from Gizmo, a vibe-coding gaming platform whose team Meta acqui-hired earlier in 2026. With Pocket’s launch, Meta is shutting down the original app it acquired from Atma Sciences.
Pocket joins a growing lineup of stand-alone mobile apps Meta has shipped in recent months, including Instagram Instants, Forum (a stand-alone Groups app), Seller (a stand-alone Marketplace app), an AI bedtime stories experiment, and a Meta AI app for Mac. CEO Mark Zuckerberg attributed the accelerated pace of releases to AI-assisted software development.
“Earlier this year, we shipped Instagram Instants. We also just launched Forum, a stand-alone Groups app, and Seller, a stand-alone Marketplace app. I expect it to become a lot easier to ship new apps,” Zuckerberg told analysts on the company’s July earnings call. “So we are planning to build out more ideas and use our recommendation systems to scale them.”
Pocket is part of Meta’s broader effort to bring AI creation tools to mainstream audiences, following earlier products that enabled AI-generated images through the Meta AI app and AI video creation through an experimental app called Vibes.
Source: TechCrunch