Breathe is a breathing exercise app you watch instead of count.

A glowing glass orb rides a slow wave. The wave is your breath — it climbs as you breathe in, flattens through the hold, and falls as you breathe out. The orb fills with water on the way up. There is nothing to read and no number to race. You just follow the light.

Most people settle within a minute.

WHY IT WORKS

A longer exhale than inhale is what settles the nervous system, so every rhythm that does it is marked Calming — and the app opens on one. Slowing to around five or six breaths a minute is the range where people report feeling calmer and more focused.

You are also cued three ways at once — a visual, a soft sound and a gentle tap — so the rhythm still reaches you with your eyes closed or the phone face down on your chest.

SEVEN RHYTHMS, READY TO GO

• Calm — long exhale to settle the nerves (4·2·8·2)
• Unwind — an easy everyday reset (4·6)
• Coherent — five and a half in, five and a half out (5.5·5.5)
• Box — steady focus under pressure (4·4·4·4)
• 4-7-8 — fall asleep faster (4·7·8)
• Focus — even and alert, for working (5·2·5·2)
• Deep Rest — very slow, for winding all the way down (6·10)

Or dial in your own rhythm, name it and keep it. Box breathing, coherent breathing, 4-7-8, pranayama, Wim Hof style rounds — set any inhale, hold, exhale and hold you like.

SOUND THAT DOESN'T GET IN THE WAY

Seven ambient beds: Water, Rain, Beach, Campfire, Wind, Night, or complete Silence.
Seven breath cues: Singing Bowl, Xylophone, Tone, Clouds, Strings, Temple Bell, Synth — or none.

Every sound in the app is tuned to one key, so any bed plays under any cue without ever clashing, and every one is matched to the same loudness — switching instrument changes the colour, never the volume. Mix and match, or turn all of it off and breathe in silence.

A GOAL, NOT A TIMER

Set a target of minutes or breaths and a quiet pill counts it down. It never turns urgent — no pulsing, no red, no alarm — and it always finishes at the end of a breath rather than cutting you off mid-inhale. When you get there you are offered five more minutes, because that is the only direction the moment points.

PROGRESS THAT NEVER NAGS

Lifetime totals, a weekly strip, and 102 badges across five kinds of practice — minutes, breaths, sessions, longest sitting and streak — so a long Sunday session and three quiet minutes every morning both count for something.

The streak is deliberately forgiving. Miss a day and it drops by one; it never resets to zero. An app meant to lower your heart rate should not be the thing that raises it.

Milestones arrive as a ripple and a soft tap you can ignore. Nothing ever stops your session to congratulate you.

MAKE IT YOURS

Five themes — Deep Calm, Moonlit, Forest Night, Ember and Ink — plus eleven individual colours you can set yourself: the water, the glow, the trail, the sky, the stars, the type. Build a palette that suits your room at night.

BUILT TO BE CALM

• No ads. Not one, anywhere.
• No account, no sign-up, no email address.
• Your practice stays on your phone. Every session, streak and badge is stored locally.
• Anonymous usage counts only — how often a feature is used, never who used it, never sold, never shared.
• Works fully offline, on a plane, in a basement.
• Under 6 MB. It will not eat your storage.
• Reduced motion, resizable text and a screen that stays awake mid-session.

GOOD FOR

Falling asleep. Coming down from a panic or an anxious spike. The ten minutes before a meeting or an exam. Slowing your heart rate after training. Winding down without a screen full of upsells.

Free, quiet, and made by one person who wanted a breathing app that felt like somewhere to be rather than something to finish.