Stillness is completely free. There are no subscriptions, no in-app purchases, and no ads — ever. Every feature is available from the moment you download it. We built Stillness for our own practice and believe a meditation tool should never be a source of friction or upselling.
Stillness is a distraction-free meditation timer for iOS, designed for serious practitioners of unguided meditation. Instead of guided sessions, sleep sounds, or social features, Stillness focuses on one thing: helping you sit in silence with structure. You get customizable sessions with named intervals, gentle chimes, progress tracking, and unique features like spontaneous reminders — all while keeping your data completely private and offline.
No. Stillness is intentionally unguided. It provides structure — a timer, intervals, chimes, and progress tracking — without telling you what to think or feel. You bring the practice; Stillness provides the framework. This makes it ideal for mindfulness meditation, autogenic training, progressive relaxation, breathwork, or any form of silent contemplation.
Any practice that benefits from timed, structured silence. This includes mindfulness meditation, autogenic training, progressive relaxation, breathwork, body scans, and silent contemplation. The customizable interval system lets you design sessions that match your specific practice — whether that's a simple 20-minute sit or an advanced multi-phase session with different phases.
No. Zero data collection, zero analytics, zero tracking SDKs. Stillness doesn't connect to any server, doesn't have accounts, and doesn't know who you are. All your data — sessions, statistics, reminders, settings — lives exclusively on your device. The only network feature is the optional iCloud data transfer for moving to a new device, which uses your own private iCloud storage and can be deleted immediately after.
Yes, completely. Stillness is designed to work fully offline. Every feature — timer, sounds, reminders, statistics — works without any internet connection. The only feature that requires connectivity is the one-time iCloud data transfer when switching to a new device.
Stillness has a built-in iCloud Transfer feature. On your old device, tap Prepare Transfer to create a secure backup in your private iCloud storage. On your new device, tap Receive Transfer to restore everything — sessions, statistics, streaks, reminders, and all settings. The transfer is instant, uses only your personal iCloud account (no external servers), and you can delete the backup from iCloud immediately after. No account creation required.
Go to the Sessions tab and tap the + button. Give your session a name, then add intervals. Each interval has a name (like "Settle In," "Main Practice," or "Cool Down"), a duration in minutes and seconds, and optional chime settings. You can create anything from a simple single-interval timer to a complex multi-phase session for advanced practices.
Intervals are the building blocks of a meditation session. Each interval represents a phase of your practice — for example, a 1-minute settling period, followed by four 12-minute meditation cycles. Each interval can have its own name, duration, and chime configuration (sound type and number of chimes). This lets you design sessions that match exactly how you practice, with gentle audio cues marking transitions between phases.
Yes. You can toggle the timer display to show only the progress ring without any numbers. This is great for practitioners who find a visible countdown distracting — you still get a subtle visual sense of progress without watching minutes tick down.
Yes. The timer can display either elapsed time or remaining time, and you can switch between them in settings. Choose whichever helps you stay present during your practice.
Yes. Stillness offers 14 color themes for the progress ring. You can also choose whether the ring fills up or empties out as your session progresses — whichever visual metaphor feels more natural to you.
Yes — and this is by design. Stillness keeps your screen gently lit during meditation so it can guide you through your session without resorting to background audio tricks or constant microphone access that drain your battery. Think of it like a candle in the room: quietly present, never intrusive. With the screen on, Stillness uses roughly 1% battery per hour — less than most meditation apps that play continuous audio. Just place your phone face-down or beside you, and let it hold space for your practice.
Tip for evening practice: If you meditate at night or in a dark room, turn on your iPhone's color tint filter (Settings → Accessibility → Display → Color Filters → Color Tint) and set it to deep red. Your screen becomes a soft red glow that won't interfere with your melatonin production or night vision. It's the same principle behind red lights in observatories and cockpits — minimal disruption to your body's natural wind-down.
Stillness includes 8 sounds total. Five are meditation chimes used to mark interval transitions: Singing Bowl, Bell, Gong, Chime, and Wood Block. Three additional sounds — Gentle Reminder, Water Drop, and Soft Chime — are designed specifically for notification reminders. You can assign any meditation chime to any interval and set how many times it plays (number of taps), letting you create a distinct audio signature for each phase of your practice.
Yes. Stillness supports customizable vibration patterns that can work alongside or instead of audio chimes. This is perfect for meditating in shared spaces, during travel, or anytime you prefer a tactile cue over an audible one.
That's up to you. You can configure the final interval to play a specific chime, give haptic feedback, or — and this is deliberate — have no feedback at all. If you want to continue sitting beyond your timed session, you can set the last interval to end silently, so nothing pulls you out of your practice. You stay in meditation as long as you choose.
You can create reminders that notify you on specific days of the week at a set time. Each reminder can be linked to a meditation session, include a custom notification message, and offers actionable buttons right from the notification: Begin Practice (opens the app ready to start), Snooze 5 min, or Skip Today. You can also tie reminders to a specific time zone — useful if your practice follows a schedule anchored to a particular location.
Spontaneous reminders are randomly timed notifications that arrive at unexpected moments during your active hours. Unlike fixed-time reminders that your mind quickly learns to dismiss, spontaneous reminders break habitual patterns — you can't predict when they'll come, so each one feels like a genuine, fresh invitation to pause and return to presence. As far as we know, no other meditation app offers this approach.
Regular reminders fire at a fixed time you choose (e.g., 7:00 AM every day). Spontaneous reminders don't have a set time — instead, you choose how many times per day (1 to 5) and Stillness schedules them at random moments within your active hours, automatically avoiding conflicts with your scheduled meditation sessions. The randomness is the point: your mind can't build a habit of ignoring them.
Yes. You can choose between 1 and 5 spontaneous reminders per day. You can also set a buffer (10, 20, or 30 minutes) to keep spontaneous reminders from arriving too close to your scheduled meditation sessions — so they never interrupt your practice or feel redundant.
Active hours define the time window during which spontaneous reminders can appear. By default this is something like 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM, but you can adjust it to match your schedule. Spontaneous reminders will only arrive within this window — never during sleep or quiet time.
Yes. Stillness is built with frequent travelers in mind. Regular reminders can be tied to a specific time zone, so a reminder set for 7:00 AM GMT will always fire at 7:00 AM GMT — whether you're in London, Tokyo, or New York. This is perfect for practices that follow a schedule anchored to a particular location or tradition.
Absolutely. For regular reminders, you can choose between local time (7:00 AM is always 7:00 AM wherever you are) or a specific time zone (7:00 AM GMT stays 7:00 AM GMT globally). For spontaneous reminders, you can choose whether active hours follow local time or stay locked to your home timezone. Stillness handles all the conversions automatically — your practice rhythm stays consistent no matter where you travel.
This setting controls how spontaneous reminder active hours behave when you travel. Use local time means your active hours (say 8 AM to 10 PM) adjust to wherever you are — if you fly from London to Dubai, 8 AM means 8 AM Dubai time. Home timezone keeps active hours fixed to your home location — so if you set it in GMT, 8 AM is always 8 AM GMT regardless of where you travel. Choose whichever matches how your daily routine actually shifts when you change time zones.
Yes. When enabled in settings, Stillness syncs your completed meditation sessions as Mindful Minutes to Apple Health. This lets you see your meditation practice alongside your other health data. The sync is optional and requires your explicit permission — Stillness never accesses Health data without asking.
Yes. Stillness automatically tracks your current streak (consecutive days with at least one session), your longest streak ever, and distinguishes between completed and partial sessions. Streaks are a gentle motivator — they're visible in your statistics but never used to guilt you into practicing.
Stillness tracks total sessions completed, total meditation time, current and longest streaks, average session duration, and a full session history with filtering by time period (last 7, 30, or 90 days). Each session record shows when you meditated, how long, and whether you completed the full session. All statistics are stored locally on your device.
Stillness requires iOS 18.0 or later. We use only Apple's native UIKit and the latest SwiftUI technologies to ensure the best possible performance and integration with your device. This means Stillness runs on iPhone models from 2018 (iPhone XS/XR) and newer.
Not yet. Stillness is currently iOS only. We're considering developing an Android version — if that's something you'd like to see, let us know through the contact form.
Not currently. We're considering it, though there's a philosophical question: a meditation timer on your wrist means wearing an electronic device during practice. We designed Stillness around the idea of setting up your phone, starting the timer, and then being fully present — no screens, no wrist buzzes. That said, we understand the appeal and it's something we may explore.
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