Limitless › Convert
The full conversion guide
Limitless support ends on 31 December 2026. You don't have to bin the hardware. This is every step of moving the Pendant onto open-source software — what it means, what to do, what goes wrong, and where the honest limits are. Allow an hour and a half, most of it waiting.
What "converting to open source" actually means
Worth being precise, because a lot of writing on this is sloppy. The Pendant's own firmware stays closed — nobody has open-sourced Limitless's hardware. What changes is every link in the chain after the microphone.
You are keeping a piece of closed hardware you already own, and moving it onto software that no acquisition can take away. That's a genuine improvement on where you are, and it is not the same thing as an open-source device.
Updated 5 September 2026
Short answer: no. It is the question we are asked most often about this device, and as of today the honest answer is that nothing has been released and nothing has been promised.
Meta acquired Limitless in December 2025 and put the Pendant on a timer. It has not published the firmware, the schematics or the server software, and it has made no commitment to do so before support ends on 31 December. If that changes we will say so here on the day it happens.
Owners have organised one — “Open Source the Limitless Pendant Firmware for All Users” — asking Meta to release it under an open licence rather than let working hardware become landfill. It is a reasonable ask and it costs nothing to add your name. It is also, realistically, a long shot. Plan as though the answer is no.
This is where most of the writing on the subject gets muddled, so it is worth separating carefully. There are two routes, and they are not the same.
One owner, quoted in that reporting, put it as well as anyone has: “There’s an escape hatch, for anyone else trying to de-Zuckerberg their setup.”
We have not done it, and this guide does not tell you how. We are reporting that it exists because you deserve to know, not recommending it. We would need to do it ourselves, more than once, before we would walk anyone else through it — and we are not going to practise on a device somebody is relying on to remember their day.
If you are technical, curious, and the pendant is spare rather than essential, the community is where to look. If the pendant matters to you, take route one. It is supported, it is reversible, and it solves the problem that actually matters: keeping your record alive after December.
We will keep this section current. If Meta releases the firmware, or if the community route becomes something we would put a non-technical person through, this is where it will be said first.
Before you begin
Everything else on this page can be retried, reversed or postponed. Your Limitless history cannot. Once the service ends, that record is gone — it can't be re-recorded and no support desk can retrieve it. If you read nothing else here, do step one this week.
The conversion
Don't reorder them. In particular, don't reset the pendant before you've exported — a reset while you're still figuring things out can cost you the easy route back.
Go to app.limitless.ai/data-exports and request your data. Choose text-only — it produces a far smaller file and it's the version that imports cleanly later.
Separately, in the Lifelog view, tick the handful of conversations you'd genuinely grieve and use Copy for the text, or the three-dots menu to download audio for just those. Keep those somewhere of your own.
Then unzip the export and actually read three or four transcripts. An export nobody opened is not a backup.
Download Omi from the App Store or Google Play. Don't be thrown if the listing still says Friend — that's the product's earlier name and it is the right app.
Create an account. If you're doing this for somebody else, use their email, not yours.
Not in an app — in the phone's own Bluetooth screen. Find the Pendant, and choose Forget This Device.
This step is not optional and it is the one people skip. A lingering system-level pairing is the single most common reason the conversion fails, and the symptom is confusing: the pendant looks connected but Omi never finds it.
The reset is done entirely with the pendant's single button, and it's a specific sequence rather than a long press. Work by the light:
If you don't reach solid blue, stop and repeat. The double-press usually needs to be faster than feels natural. Don't move on hoping it'll sort itself out — it won't.
Open the Omi app with the pendant beside the phone. Tap Connect at the top left and select your pendant from the list.
Pair inside the app. If you pair from the phone's Bluetooth screen you'll recreate exactly the problem you fixed in step three.
Allow the permissions it asks for — Bluetooth, microphone, notifications. Declining any of them fails quietly later and looks like broken hardware.
In Omi, go to Profile → Import Data and select the ZIP from step one.
If an export that included audio refuses to import, delete the Audio and Meetings folders from it, re-zip, and try again. Very large files may need splitting into parts.
Then search for three things you know happened — a name, a place, an appointment. If they come back, the migration worked.
Your written record moves across. The recordings themselves do not — which is precisely why step one had you download the handful that matter separately. Don't discover this after you've stopped paying attention to the old account.
An ordinary day, in your usual rooms, with your usual people. At the end of it, open the app and read the transcript properly — not just "did something appear" but "are these the right words".
Only once that day looks right should you consider the conversion done.
Going further
Everything above leaves you on Omi's cloud — better than Limitless, because the software is open and your data is exportable, but still someone else's server. If you want the full version, the backend is open source too.
Omi publishes its Python/FastAPI backend under the MIT licence, and the app can be pointed at your own instance instead of theirs. That's the configuration where nothing about your day touches a company at all.
Be realistic about it. This is a weekend project for someone comfortable with servers, not an afternoon's tinkering — you're standing up a backend, wiring up transcription, and taking on the running and the backups yourself. Most people should not do this, and there's no shame in stopping at the step above.
If you want to look: the source and setup docs are at github.com/BasedHardware/omi and docs.omi.me.
This is roughly what we build for families as the Keeper — an in-home memory aid where the record stays on your own equipment, set up and looked after by a person you can ring. Same principle, none of the server administration.
The honest limits
We asked Omi directly whether a converted Pendant keeps working once Limitless’s servers go dark. Their reply, which they were happy for us to publish:
Once the pendant is factory-reset and paired to the Omi app, it runs over Bluetooth through Omi’s own integration, and the audio is processed by Omi’s cloud. It does not rely on Limitless’s servers for that.
They were also careful about the limit of what they can claim, and we think that is to their credit: they can speak fully for Omi’s side, where there is no Limitless dependency, but they cannot inspect Limitless’s own device firmware. So the accurate phrasing — theirs, and now ours — is that a converted pendant works through Omi independently of Limitless’s servers, rather than an absolute guarantee about what the firmware does internally.
That is the honest answer, and it is a good deal better than the silence we had a week ago.
When it goes wrong
Almost always the Bluetooth pairing from step three. Go back to the phone's own Bluetooth settings and confirm the Pendant is genuinely forgotten, not just disconnected. Then close the Omi app completely, reopen it with the pendant an inch from the phone, and try Connect again.
Clear any solid red first with a ten-second hold. Then make the double-press faster — tap and hold almost as one motion. Watch for purple while holding; if you never see purple you haven't entered the sequence. Charge it and try again if it's been sitting flat.
Keep the phone close, don't force-close the app, and make sure it's paired to only one phone. On Android, aggressive battery optimisation is the usual culprit — set Omi to Unrestricted.
Delete the Audio and Meetings folders from the ZIP, re-zip, and retry. Split very large exports into smaller parts. If you originally requested audio, request a fresh text-only export instead — it's the format the importer expects.
Nearly always how it's worn rather than the software. Wear it outside your clothing, higher on the chest, with nothing pressed over the microphones — Limitless's own advice was to keep the light facing outward, and the same logic applies. Retest the same room and the same people before drawing conclusions.
Check the connection in the Omi app itself rather than in Bluetooth settings — the phone can show a pendant as paired while the app isn't streaming. Confirm microphone permission was granted. Restart the phone.
The service ended in Brazil, China, the EU, Israel, South Korea, Turkey and the UK on 19 December 2025, and stored data was deleted after that. There's nothing left to export, so skip step one entirely — but the hardware rescue from step two onward still applies, and it's the whole reason to bother.
Omi's community answers quickly on Discord — post your phone model, OS version, app version and what you're seeing. Support is help@omi.me. Or text us and we'll talk it through.
Stuck, or short of time
No charge and no obligation for that part — it's the step with a deadline and nobody should lose their history to a form that timed out. See also the Limitless overview and the full transition plan.
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