iBreathe Reviews

5 stars for app architecture. Down to 4 stars for ads.— It’s one thing to have ad banners (unless you pay the nominal price to remove them) but when the ad takes over a given page with no way out but to shutdown and restart iBreathe , it’s too much. So, I paid to have the distraction of ads removed. Down to 3 stars for continuing to ask for money in the form of a “tip jar”-an after-breathing-reflection-moment distraction for sure. In an era when consumers are constantly bombarded with requests for tips in even the most unlikely of venues, it would seem that a fair-trade price for a product or service would be sufficient and, well,…fair. Update: After paying the price to remove ads, the In-app tip-jar says tipping “any amount” will remove the tip-jar button that pops up after a breathing session. You can choose between 4 tipping options: $ .99, 1.99, 4.99 and 9.99…
1) These options prevent the choice of tipping “any amount”. 2) The developer’s response to my original review indicates a tip as low as $.50 will remove the tip-jar button. Hmmm, I don’t see that option.

This is very close to what I’m looking for an a breathing app.

The interface is not quite as intuitive as I’d like, but I was able to navigate it after a few ministers of pressing menu items. I’d like to see a few tweaks I think would make iBreathe more useful.

•Adding a .25s delay after pressing Start and after each bell or interval change signal would make me feel less rushed to sync with the different intervals. As it is I feel I’m “chasing” the ball and not in sync with it. This would also help with latency when using my HomePod for the audio.

•Adding a double chine of the bell (which sounds quite nice btw) to signal the end of a breathing session would tell me of session’s end when breathing through my eyelids.

•Adding multiple notifications would allow me to set 3 or 4 sessions throughout the day to settle my breathing and mind.

I’ve looked at several other apps and none come as close to meeting my preferences as this one. 99¢ to removed ads is a great value, and thankfully, they don’t appear during the breathing sessions. All in all, this is a very clean app, elegant in it’s simplicity. I’m happy to have found it.

-saw you replied, looking forward to the update! Also hope I didn’t sound too critical haha. It is a solid app. I may have sounded too harsh with my comments on the visuals. My own personal use of iBreathe leans towards the audio and vibrations, but there are times that I have found myself dependent on the visuals (like if I’m in a public place). So it’s been a great mix. But definitely looking forward to the update!

For example. I love reading books on my phone and it would be great to be able to use iBreathe while reading my book. Right now the breathing sessions pause when I try to use other apps. What’s important is the timer and the intervals, I don’t need to see the visual at all really. Most times I have my eyes closed anyway because I primarily switch between the inhales, exhales, holds based on the vibration or audio cues. So the intervals, audio & vibrations could be used in the background when I read my books you know what I mean? It also drives me nuts that I have to have the screen on completely to use iBreathe . I don’t understand why it’s not like any music app, where the audios/vibrations can still operate when the screen is off.

I can’t say enough good things about iBreathe. I use it for meditation. I use it for insomnia. Whenever I think I’m about to make a bad decision or send an angry text, I spent 20 minutes with iBreathe, and I get control of myself. I love to get under my weighted blanket and use iBreathe. It’s almost as effective as Xanax. I’ve gone out to my car at lunch at work and used iBreathe when I’m super stressed. It helps me get my mind right. I’ve been waiting to years for voice commanded breathing prompts. It’s so much more relaxing than staring at a visual prompt on your phone. I paid the 99 cents to get rid of ads. In love that you can customize your sessions. This is my most important app on my phone. LOVE IT

I love the breathing exercises they have! The interface is very easy to navigate and the options for customizations are great! I can turn on clicks to count off and also a person to tell me when to inhale, exhale and hold. This is a great option for me because then I can just focus on the breathing exercise instead of trying to keep track of time and just follow the directions. You have the option to turn it off it you want to for the people who want it silent. All in all a great app. You can also customize a breathing pattern too. My only gripe is that it doesn’t have a great variety of breathing exercises like those designed to energize.

I have been looking for a streamlined breathing app that I still had control over, and I found it here. iBreathe is straightforward and customizable. You can quickly get to the breathing interval that you want and can create your own or tweak the ones that come with iBreathe . Compared with other apps that have too many unnecessary features (like asking me my mood after every breathing session), this one is a joy to use. Others have mentioned ads and the tip jar, but for me it is a small price to pay for what I get from iBreathe . It would be great for a future enhancement if it could feed into the iPhone Fitness app, but I’m happy to use it stand alone too.

As a physical therapist I both use this and recommend it to my patients regularly. I have found breathing and the diaphragm to be one of the most important pieces of how our cores function and our spines are protected and stabilized. I find the 4-7-8 breathing to be the best for calming the nervous system / mind and to help decrease tension in the body. I also use this interval during cold plunges to calm the nervous system and endure the plunge more easily. Highly recommend iBreathe to anyone who deals with mental or physical pain because in my professional experience I see controlled diaphragmatic breathing to be one of the best ways to help improve physical and mental dysfunction. When applied daily it works wonders.

After doing ten cycles I feel as relaxed as I am when I take Xanax. I have panic disorder. I have hyperthyroidism that triggers the panic. I don’t want to take pills. I want to set my mind right and change my neural pathways. iBreathe is such an amazing tool for me. I do this multiple times per day even if I’m not having panic. There are two pathways to anxiety. The cortex thinking part of your brain and the amygdala which is the physical response. The heart pounding, shortness of breath, sweating kind of anxiety. iBreathe allows the para sympathetic nervous symptom (rest and digest) take over the sympathetic nervous system (flight or fight). The only way to get rid of the amygdala response of anxiety is exercises such as iBreathe. Downloading this was the best thing I did for myself and my path to balanced mental health.

Before I start, let me make something clear. I used to breathe all the time and always talk about how breathing never helped me release stress, but then I got iBreathe. I got iBreathe, and then went through all the styles of breathing. I realized that what I thought, “Breathing” was, wasn’t it. I realized I wasn’t holding, or going slow enough. iBreathe has helped me relieve stress, calm down, and prevent stress. I would definitely recommend iBreathe, and I also really love to be able to adjust the noises and colors, and you can do that too. So if you struggle from anxiety, or just want to live a more calm, stable life- I recommend iBreathe. Thank you so much for creating it and putting it out there for us. :)

iBreathe is the most useful in the whole App Store! I am not over exaggerating when I point out the power balanced with simplicity. First things first, powerful! We all are looking for an app to give us value of some kind, when seeking out these type of apps for relaxation and actual improvement in the state of our body/mind. iBreathe puts the others in its category to shame. A free app that doesn’t collect my data, and is simple yet thorough in everything it sets out to accomplish, yes please!

It crushes the best of the meditation hours long videos scattered all over video sharing platforms. People get iBreathe and rave about it for one reason only. It works! Get this gem! And support this type of company!

iBreathe has been very beneficial to me leading up to finals week. I downloaded iBreathe to see if it would help me decrease my stress levels during the two week period I spend completing my assignments for the semester, and studying for my final exams. The breathing interval of inhaling for 4 seconds, holding for 5 and exhaling for 6 really helped slow my heart rate down when I began to get stressed out about different assignments. Slowing down the heart rate helps to decrease stress levels because when the heart rate is fast, your oxygen intake is lower, which can actually stress you out more. I also used iBreathe before taking one of my tests, because I tend to get bad testing anxiety. Doing a breathing exercise prior to taking my test calmed me down quite a bit, and now I don’t think i’ll be able to test without doing it. Since I was calmer during my test, I did better on it than I had on others in the same class. Doing breathing exercises lowers anxiety levels because you can feel you’re chest tightening when you’re anxious, and taking deep breaths relieves this. Another reason why breathing exercises are beneficial is because without that anxious feeling, I am happier than usual after doing my breathing exercise.

I’ve been using iBreathe for years and it’s a gift that keeps on giving. Love the new features added over the years. Having iBreathe on my watch too is just icing on the cake. Thank you for iBreathe!

After watching Alan Watkin’s Ted Talk on how impactful it is to breathe rhythmically (equal time spent exhaling and inhaling), I looked for an app to time my breaths. This one is the second app I stumbled upon and my search has come to a happy ending. Love this. Simple, customizable, and oozing in value. I hope to use this at least once every day. Wondering if the developers would consider allowing iBreathe to run in the background while the phone is locked. Would love to keep it running while I’m at my desk at work. Either way, great app.

I’ve used other apps for breathing exercises and relaxation but none of them beat this simple yet colorful app. It’s the only app that offer notifications sounds when to inhale and exhale and hold. It’s also the only app to set intervals and has true box breathing. Other apps fall short compared to iBreathe.

Please make available for Apple Watch. This would be great if Users dont have to be attached to phones all the time. For those who have Apple Watch series 6 with the updated health specs, with cellular it’s no longer necessary to have your phone throughout the day. I have reminders set on iBreathe so I receive notifications on my series 6 but can’t activate breathing unless I have my phone. Apple’s mindfulness app for apple watch doesn’t have box breathing. Please add Apple Watch app soon.

Looked for a lot of breathing app and this one was the best. I wanted full control over the breathing pace and this has it. I can adjust the breaths by the millisecond, not just the second. I had an issue where my Apple Watch would pause after a couple breaths so I sent an email to the developer. He replied within the hour and had an update ready to go to fix it the next day. Apple had updated the watch OS and he was ready to fix iBreathe for the update. So he’s on top of iBreathe . The only things I could think to improve would be make the cycles left type bigger for the Apple Watch and get some alternative voices using AI to do the cycle changes. That’s more of a fun to have. I like the female voice that is currently used. And pay to get rid of the ads. It’s worth it if you want to breath right.

I am an RN and I’ve known about the virtues of deep breathing for years. It was actually the first form of Complimentary/Alternative Medicines my professor talked about in nursing school. There is tons of clinical evidence out there and any Respiratory Therapist can tell you how important breathing is- that’s why they have jobs.

iBreathe has replaced my other deep breathing app. I customized that one after a lot of experimentation over the years, but this one was so easy to set the way I like (and the default settings did a lot of the work, if I’m being honest).

If you know anyone directly/indirectly affected by Covid or anyone with high blood pressure or stress (do you get the point that I mean everyone?), please tell them to download iBreathe and try to use it for a few minutes at least once a day to aid in general health and well being.

I like the simple interface. The tone that marks the inhale and exhale is great, and you can choose to have voice commands if you like. Also nice to have options to create custom intervals and save them so you can easily choose which one to do. And the length of the session can be set by selecting the number of cycles to do. Another reviewer complained about the tip jar at the end of a session. I’d you don’t like it, it disappears once you drop some change in it.

iBreathe works great as if is, but if the developer is bored they could add programs. I’m trying to increase my breath lengths, so it might be nice to do 5 minutes of one type of interval, the 5 minutes of another type and so on. In fact, I’ve been looking for a meditation timer that will give me a chime at 1 minute and the chimes at intervals and a final triple chime. How hard can that be?

A few times recently I’ve had some sort a spell, a panic attack, I guess. Sometimes for no apparent reason, sitting in a sales presentation (quit laughing), being stuck in a parking garage when the exit arm went down too quickly (now I know you are laughing), and other equally benign reasons. My heart rate jumps up to scary levels, 207 bpm one time, and I begin to hyperventilate. Anyway, since I got iBreathe a few months ago, I’ve used it several times to force myself to slow my breathing. When I tried without iBreathe , I could not trust my counting to be steady, slow and accurate. This helps Slow Me Down! Just tonight, I got dizzy while FaceTiming with my 3rd old grandson when he started walking thru the house and I was watching the ceiling and walls jump back and forth. I got dizzy then nauseated then started sweating. How stupid. I got my Breathe app and in 3 cycles (and a cold, wet wash cloth), I felt fine. Thank you Breathe!

I caught Covid two years ago, before the vaccine, and am still suffering from the long term effects. I’ve needed a breathing program to help me increase my CO2 tolerance and exercise my lungs. I’ve tried a number of them before I found this app. It’s simple, effective and, best of all, easy to use. I created a custom routine for me and I’m using it multiple times a day. I use it on my iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. It’s been a game changer for me. Yes, you have to pay to remove ads, but it’s a tiny fee and well worth it. What would I change? Make the count of remaining reps larger. Allow multiple customizations. I’m being picky, because this is such a great app already.
Update: I am using the update. Thanks for adding the countdown to start. It’s nice to get settled before the routine begins. The extra customizations are great. Now I can program in my entire Long Covid protocol.
Since using this program, my oxygen saturation has gone from 89-90 to 95. That is a HUGE increase, and using your program for my breathing therapy played a big part in making that happen.

Many breathing apps and meditations where they have you inhale, hold and exhale for a certain amount of time makes me nervous because the counting just makes me anxious. For example with box breathing they will count to a number, hold for a number of seconds, and exhale for a number of seconds all while counting. That makes me anxious and it makes me feel like I can't breath.

But iBreathe is much better. It has a visual of an outline of a circle filling up or draining and there is no counting either on the screen or out loud. (There may be an option for a verbal countdown but if so I don't want it and have it off). Thus iBreathe is very calming.

You can also customize how long you inhale, hold (if you hold at all) exhale and hold at the exhale (if you do at all) and you can customize the intervals. They do have presets like the box one and other common ones but I like that you can customize it because I've often felt like the typical breathing times for out there are too short and I feel like I'm panting and making myself more anxious. But not with iBreathe! It's great! 5 stars!

I just wish they’ll come out with an update to add a breathing program where you start faster and end up slower for example inhale and exhale starts with four seconds and then by the time you finish your set up program you’ll be breathing at seven seconds that would be awesome because when you use this you really want to breathe slower after a few times and you almost can’t catch up with the program because normally everyone who starts to do this kind of breathing usually the breathing becomes slower but this is not bad but I just wish I can see an update with setting you’re on program of what you start with and what you end up with and I’ll take you slowly up throughout the duration.