Meta just launched an app that lets people, including kids, type a sentence and get a playable video game back. No fanfare, no keynote, no Zuckerberg standing on a stage in a hoodie. The app simply appeared on the App Store and Google Play on June 29, and the internet had to figure out what it was on its own.
The app is called Pocket, and it generates interactive mini-games from plain-language text prompts. Meta calls these creations “gizmos.” Think of it as ChatGPT meets a game engine: you describe something like “a snake swallowing croissants through the streets of Paris,” and the app builds it into a playable experience.
How Pocket came to be
The origins trace back to a startup called Gizmo, which Meta acquired earlier in 2026. Before the acquisition, Gizmo had already built a meaningful user base, accumulating 635,000 lifetime installs.
Meta folded the Gizmo team into its broader AI efforts and rebuilt the product as Pocket. The app’s package name, com.facebook.gizmo, is a quiet nod to its lineage. It’s the kind of detail you only find if you’re poking around in app metadata, which is exactly how journalists discovered the launch in the first place.
