Your own version

Your own Headspace-style breathing timer on your iPhone

Headspace is a library: more than 1,000 guided exercises, plus sleep and focus content. If you keep coming back to one or two routines, describe them to Borel instead, a breathing pattern, a quiet timer, a soft bell, and it writes a calm native app in Swift. You try it in your browser and keep it on your iPhone.

Updated . Borel isn’t connected to Headspace.

A prompt to start from
“A calm breathing app. Home shows three routines: box breathing 4-4-4-4, 4-7-8 and a 10-minute silent timer. During a session a circle grows on the inhale and shrinks on the exhale, with a gentle haptic at each change, and an optional voice reads cue words I write myself. Log each session and show minutes per week on a chart.”

About Headspace

What people like about Headspace

In our words, from what Headspace says about itself.

  • A large library: Headspace counts more than 1,000 expert-led exercises.
  • Sleepcasts, soundscapes and focus music beside the meditations, plus a new meditation each day.
  • Move Mode, yoga and fitness sessions for the body as well as the mind.

Headspace invites you to try it for $0 with a 14-day trial, then renews a monthly or annual plan; its plans page didn't show the amount when we checked.

Made for you

What your own breathing timer can do

What the prompt above builds, and what you can change by asking Borel in plain words.

  • Your breathing pattern

    Box breathing, 4-7-8 or counts of your own, drawn as a circle that swells and settles.

  • A timer that stays quiet

    Choose a length and start; the screen dims and a soft tap marks each change of breath.

  • Cues in your own words

    Short phrases you write, read out slowly by the iPhone's built-in voices if you want them.

  • A gentle record

    Minutes per day on a small chart, with no streak that scolds you for a missed morning.

Said plainly

How it's different

  • There are no guided recordings, courses or sleepcasts from teachers; the app holds only what you put in it.
  • It doesn't log mindful minutes to the Health app.
  • It isn't therapy or medical care.
  • Your app isn't Headspace and won't look or work like it: it has only what you ask Borel to build, and none of Headspace's own content.
  • Your data stays in your own app: on your iPhone by default, or in your app's own database in Borel's cloud if you add accounts.

How to get yours

From the prompt to your home screen

  • 1

    Start from the prompt

    Change anything in it first: names, rules, screens. Borel asks what it needs to know, then writes the app in Swift and SwiftUI.

  • 2

    Use it in your browser

    It opens in a live iPhone simulator streamed from Borel's Mac, at no cost. Building starts free, with 5 free credits a day, up to 30 a month.

  • 3

    Keep it on your iPhone

    With Pro, from $20 a month, Borel Companion installs it with a free Apple ID, up to 3 apps at a time, and renews each one every 7 days while it runs.

How to make a meditation and breathing appThe screens it needs, what it keeps, the iPhone features it can use and what to ask for next.See the guide

Frequently asked questions

Yes. The iPhone's built-in voices can read your text at a slow pace; Borel writes that in Swift with AVFoundation.

Yes. Ask for a haptic on every inhale and exhale, and you feel the rhythm instead of watching it.

Yes. Pick times, such as 11:00 and 15:00, and a reminder appears on the lock screen at each one.

Yes. The routines and your session log live on the phone.

Make your own breathing timer

Start from the prompt on this page and change it until it's yours. Borel builds it while you watch.