User guide
Getting started
- Open the app. Three short onboarding screens explain what the app does and how to follow the prompts.
- On the home screen pick a length — 1 to 5 minutes — and an ambience.
- Press Start. The screen stays awake for the whole session.
The session screen
The circle grows as you inhale and shrinks as you exhale; the label under it says Inhale, Hold or Exhale. There is no second counter on purpose — follow the shape and the sound, not the numbers.
The rhythm is the same for every session: inhale 4 s → hold 1 s → exhale 6 s → hold 1 s (a 12-second cycle, five cycles per minute).
- Pause / Resume — the button under the circle, or the space bar on Mac.
- Finish early — the Finish button, or Esc on Mac.
- The session pauses automatically if you leave the app, or when a Mac goes to sleep.
- At the end a soft chime plays and the result screen shows the length and the number of cycles.
Ambiences and volume
Five ambiences: ocean waves, purring cat, rain, forest, fireplace. Each one has a seamless soundscape and its own visual. Tap an ambience on the home screen to preview it.
The ambience volume follows the breath: it rises gently during the inhale and falls during the exhale, so you can practise with your eyes closed. Volume is set in Settings → Ambience volume; setting it to zero gives you a silent, visual-only session.
Sound in silent mode (iPhone)
By default the app follows the silent switch: with the phone on silent you get haptics and no sound. Turn on Settings → Play sound in silent mode if you want the ambience to play anyway. With that setting on, the app pauses other audio (music, podcasts) for the session and releases it afterwards.
Haptics can be turned off separately in Settings.
History and statistics
History lists your sessions, newest first. Swipe a row to delete it.
Statistics can be shown for a week (7 days including today), a month (30 days) or all time:
| Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Completed sessions | Sessions you finished in full, inside the selected period. |
| Interrupted sessions | Sessions you stopped early that still met the 80 % rule (below), inside the period. |
| Practice time | Total real duration of completed sessions in the period. |
| Completion rate | Completed ÷ (completed + interrupted) × 100, inside the period. |
| Current streak | Consecutive days with at least one completed session, counting up to today. The streak stays alive if your last session was yesterday — today still counts. |
| Best streak | The longest such run over your whole history. |
| Active days | Days with at least one completed session inside the period. |
Streaks are computed over your whole history, not just the selected period, because they belong to you rather than to the window you are looking at.
The 80 % rule: a session you stop early is written to history only if you completed at least 80 % of the planned cycles (for example four cycles out of five in a one-minute session). Below that, nothing is saved and the result screen says so. If the app is killed mid-session, the same rule is applied at the next launch, using the progress saved during the session.
Reminders
Up to three daily reminders. Each one has a time and a set of weekdays. They are local notifications: the system schedules them on your device, and nothing is sent anywhere.
If you denied notification permission, open Settings → Notifications → Breathe on your device, allow notifications, and set the reminders again.
Accessibility
- VoiceOver — every control is labelled; the session screen announces each phase change.
- Dynamic Type — text scales with your system setting.
- Reduce Motion — the app replaces the breathing animation with a calm, low-motion cue when the system setting is on.
- Sound only — put the screen aside and follow the ambience, which rises and falls with each phase.
- Contrast follows the system light and dark appearance.
Mac version
- Menu bar → Start 1 / 3 / 5 min — begin without opening the window.
- ⌘R — start or restart a session.
- ⌘Space — pause and resume.
- Esc — finish early.
- The display does not sleep during a session; the session pauses when the Mac sleeps.
Deleting your data
- One session: swipe it away in History.
- Everything: Settings → Delete all history.
- Uninstalling the app removes all of its data from the device.
Nothing is stored outside your device, so there is nothing for us to delete on our side. See the Privacy Policy.
Still stuck?
See the FAQ or write to ftech@pletnev.biz.