Insight Timer–Meditate & Sleep Reviews

I don’t write reviews for apps. I felt compelled to do so for this one. First off, i have been trying to get into the practice of meditation for several years now. I’ve tried classes, doing it on my own, and various other apps: Calm, HeadSpace, etc. Problem with those apps is they all charge you a monthly fee after the trial period. This is the only truly free app for meditation. Once I got into it, it’s laid out so beautifully, easy to find specific meditations, and its so user friendly. I really found myself looking forward to meditating after the first couple of days. It is now a part of my morning routine and i could not imagine my life without it. They do offer courses in addition to the over 45,000 free meditations. I fell in love with one meditation guide in particular who led a Smiling Meditation which literally brought happy tears to my eyes while meditating! I found that she offered a 10-day self-confidence workshop. I wound up going ahead and purchasing the yearly membership for $65. Well worth it to me bc i don’t think I could run out of courses or premium content on InsightTimer! Could not recommend enough! If you have had other apps collecting space on your phone, do yourself a favor and delete them! Get Insight Timer!

As a teacher, I’ve been recommending different apps and music for my students and patients over the years and I can honestly say that I have switched and I use Insight Timer EVERY DAY without fail and have done so since the day I found it! I recommend it to everyone! I’m so impressed with the content and how it’s broken down by category and by time. If you only have a few minutes, you still can access a mind space to breathe.
There is so much to explore and do within this little app. You can choose to approach meditation from a spiritual or scientific angle, you can simply use it to breathe or listen to lectures and learn something new, you can use it as a meditation timer or go into a chat room and discuss meditation or philosophy with other like minded people.
The option to join and become part of a community and connect with other people on the journey of learning and discovery is wonderful, and it’s international platform makes it uniquely powerful.
I can’t say enough about this because it’s so much more than an app, it’s an idea that came together in an app and created an international community of meditators and made it accessible to even the newest beginner. I have passed InsightTimer on to over a hundred people and will continue to do so! I can’t recommend this enough!!

I've been through quite a few meditation apps, but Insight Timer is by far the best and the one I've been using consistently for months now and plan to continue using. Unlike other apps that only feature their own meditations or require you to pay to access all of them, Insight Timer allows users to upload their own meditations and there is an enormous catalog with more added each day. Also, you can choose from the amount of time to the category of meditation you want and see/leave ratings and reviews on anything. As if this weren't great enough, it also has the best meditation timer I've seen in any app. Set any amount of time or infinite time, add the bell of your choice from one to three times, beginning and/or end and/or intervals. AND beyond these wonderful things, it offers groups to enter for support or kind messages, and it logs your progress! It's so great to be able to see how many days consecutively you've meditated and for me this is a huge motivator not to miss a day. It's also interesting to see your days and weeks compared and how much time total you've spent on the timer vs guided meditations. Recommend InsightTimer to anyone and everyone who enjoys being relaxed and grounded!(I.e. Every human being)

sighhhh. InsightTimer is everything. using insight timer consistently, i have 135 total days meditated & 66 consecutive days completed. i use InsightTimer from the moment i wake up, work on my laptop, in an uber, when i’m home reading or cooking, and finally when i sleep. i can’t believe there’s a FREE app like this that houses so many wonderful meditation tracks. you can choose music or guided meditation. i ‘ve even played the kid meditations for my little nephew to fall asleep. in the settings area, it has a full chart of your progress and how many total minutes etc you’ve meditated. seeing the numbers really motivates you to keep the streak going & meditate daily. if you don’t like guided meditation, there’s a simple timer you can use, which is the original purpose of InsightTimer . thank you to the creators of insight timer & the teachers who provide their guidance & positive energy. i’ve tagged them on instagram stories in the past & they always reply and like. i love an interactive company. i see myself purchasing their ‘member plus’ version which has a lot of cool features. i rarely write app store reviews but this platform has truly helped me in my daily life. THANK YOU! sending peace & love your way. download this dang app i tell ya!
~Ra

I cannot say enough about how much I enjoy InsightTimer. It doesn’t have any advertisements, like in other free apps, and I can pull up any type, at any moment, for as long as I need, and for what purpose I need it for, and VIOLA!! Poof!! 💥There it displays many many choices! I am so thrilled, there is such a treasure chest of talented gems, and I am really learning so much! It not only helps me learn how to meditate, but how to continue putting into practice what I’ve learned. Prior to InsightTimer, I had restless sleep. I am experiencing the joys of menopause, so there are a lot of sleepless nights. However, when I used the sleeping meditations, I’m sound asleep in minutes! 😴 I wake refreshed & ready to take on the day! I’ve even done morning meditations, during acupuncture, for a power nap, waiting for an appointment... anywhere at any time of the day. I’ve gained an abundance mindset and have truly felt the confidence, clarity, pleasure, self-love, healing, cleansing, serenity, gratefulness, openness to love, self-care, inspiration, rejuvenation, motivation, fun, and receptivity to enjoy discovery and new challenges... and truly living life. Very powerful and well organized app. Thank you for the developers & beautiful contributions. The BEST APP EVER!! Life changing!!

This used to be a great app. Simple and compelling. But more than any other app I can think of, they keep making changes that lower the experience…clutter the screen, put the most commonly used features (the timer, for instance) underneath menus instead of on the home page. And they’ve destroyed the community they had by a series of rearrangements and bugs that have killed off a lot of the friendly conversations with others which I enjoyed about InsightTimer. It’s been more than a year since the “new messages” red light meant anything, and I just stopped checking it because it would not light up when there were new messages (after working perfectly for a year before that). But now no one sends messages anyway so who cares.

Update: they tell me you can customize your home page and make it the timer, which is good. But the criticism about the reduction in community interaction remains. I’d say the number of messages I receive (Ie “thank you for meditating with me”, or custom messages) and responses I receive from my messages is down 80% from before they made these changes last year. It’s essentially killed off any social/community aspect of InsightTimer , which is a shame. It’s a wonderful group of people and those of use who enjoy saying hello really miss the way InsightTimer used to facilitate those happy interactions.

A message I wrote to just one of the many teachers available to you with Insight Timer:

Thank you Paz. For the 30 day mantra challenge❤️. I am 55 years and meditation is new to me. I gave myself permission to pursue this challenge using the body and mind I currently have (busy and distracted with many joys, passions and concerns) and so I started the challenge laying down in bed in the morning (cozy), I enjoyed it so much I sometimes did 5 sessions a day as I washed dishes and did the laundry and walked the dog❤️. I let myself be who I am at this moment, someone entirely new to mantras and meditation, and so added the challenge to my life without trying to do it perfectly. Sometimes I sang along. Sometimes I just listened. Sometimes I picked up after my dog. —-> it didn’t matter, I came out the other side of the challenge a more calm, present, peaceful person. I was fascinated to be able to feel the vibration of my singing in my heart with my hand set on my chest. It’s so exciting to be learning something so extraordinary at this time in my life. I am listening and participating again now with my quieter mind. This has improved every aspect of my life. I also listen often to your album Inner Light. Thank you Paz for this gift. Thank you Insight Timer❤️

The review button on the site is broken and users are no longer able to update old reviews that we have written or leave new ones. This problem started about 2 weeks ago. I have emailed InsightTimer about 6 times over this period, but nothing has been done to fix the problem.

I am in the habit of listening to new meditations and then leaving reviews (which are never negative) so I know which meditations I have already listened to, which I love or merely like. I enjoy reading the reviews of others as well. So the fact that this review button is not working is a problem.

Otherwise, I love Insight Timer. I have been using it for 3 years and 3 months and have clocked over 10k minutes of meditation. The topics are varied and interesting. I bounce around a lot to new meditations based on the topics I am working on in my life. I find some of the meditations to be incredible and in the style I enjoy and others to be just good, in my opinion, but not my style. That is why the review button is so important, so I don’t unintentionally begin a meditation that I have already listened to in the past and just found to be ok, but unmotivating to me.

Update — now three years in & would prefer it stop being so commercial. Meditation is not complicated, does not require going to class for the rest of your life. Those of us who just want to use the timer function — it gets put in with constant ads in your face. It is shameful actually that an organization that says it wants to make your life better pushes you to do routines and classes that actually detract from getting from point A to point B. Oh well, if the times keep getting stuck behind commercialization, at least I’m not addicted to these classes at all, I can use alternative timers or none at all.

I still mostly use it for the great sounding sequential timers. Who wants to be blasted out of their session? Not me, and InsightTimer provides quality sounds to let me first relax, sound so I know to move into my first part, then when that time has passed, sound, so I know to move into my second (rest) part, then a nice gentle sound to let me know I can comfortably open my eyes and end my "meditation". Works perfect -- and is all I need to use -- I can add friends when I have extra time or browse the "forums" but totally not necessary to do Turning Within meditation (Kelvin Chin) -- a sort of hybrid of TM, a sort of mantra meditation. It has made a world of difference and InsightTimer helps me keep my place and incidentally tracks the days that turn to weeks and months. Very happy with InsightTimer!

As a therapist, I’m great for listening to clients and making suggestions for addressing ongoing issues but this is the first time I was intentional with beginning my own personal practice of mindfulness and meditation. I didn’t know where to start and thought an app would be helpful. I didn’t know there are apps that require paid membership in order to access the content and I understand that. But I didn’t want to pay for a membership if I wasn’t sure I would be consistent. Insight Timer fit exactly what I was looking for! First, the amount of content that’s free is staggering! That lets me know there are other professionals that understand the reach of their expertise and don’t mind sharing with the larger community. Second, this content is provided by professionals who practice in this arena of wellness. I want to explore more and I see there are ways for me to personalize my wellness experience. Mood tracking, journaling, setting reminders and timers, classes and now I’m excited to continue this practice with full intention. Thank you to all who have developed InsightTimer and who contribute to it! Amazing work! And the surround community will benefit from this work!

Insight Timer has been with me since way before it became a source of so much varied and wonderful material. I used to use it just to time my own meditations or the holding of my yin postures, when all it was was a timer! Even then it felt like a treasure on my iPad. I lost my thread with meditation for a while and when I returned I found a new world in the making on InsightTimer, with a most inspiring talk from the CEO to kick off my appreciation, respect, and enthusiasm. I came back as a regular and haven’t scratched the surface, in spite of using it nearly daily. It helped me through a two year battle of my husband’s with cancer that would eventually take him out. Most remarkably, my husband, never having been a meditator himself, found his way to using InsightTimer for desperately needed help in sleeping the last few months of his life. He listened so much the last few weeks that all we caregivers needed to know how to access his favorites, day and night. And now I’m returning to this wealth of help to work with my grief and move forward. I can see that it will be a godsend yet again. Thank you for a remarkable product, conceived and conducted with great heart and smarts. Still a treasure for me. w

I love InsightTimer, I really do, but unfortunately there’s some limitations that make it difficult to use under certain situations.
I paid for the upgrade. There are many Courses included with the premium membership that are fabulous. The daily Insights are also wonderful. The problem is not with the content. The limitation is that The Course tracks and the Daily Insights don’t repeat. So you’ll be trying to fall asleep while listening to a 10 minute meditation and when it’s over, if you haven’t fallen asleep, you’ll need to dig around for your glasses in the dark (if you’re like me) then find your phone, to manually restart the meditation. Or like yesterday, after the start of a migraine the same thing. I’m getting very frustrated, having to continually do this with each meditation. They have the ‘repeat’ function on the regular guided meditations, but just not on Course tracks or Daily Insights. Why? I’m really sorry to bash such a great app, and it truly is a great app but again, those limitations really knock it down a few stars for me. In addition, there is no way to bookmark Course tracks or Daily Insights or download them as a Premium member, like you can do with the regular guided meditations. Not sure if I can find a better meditation app, but these limitations are going to make me try to seek one out.

I have been using the free version of Insight Timer since 2011 and other than my standard mail, text and calendar apps, this is InsightTimer I use most consistently. I recently upgraded to the paid version thinking that at the very least, I should support this dedicated staff and I’m really glad I did. I’m enjoying the courses and other paid features.
I’m an executive coach and for years, have been recommending Insight Timer to every one of my clients, most of whom have never meditated before. There are so many options to help beginners get started, from short meditations that can help busy clients dip their toes in the water and build their meditation muscles to guided meditations that really help people learn to calm their minds. I’m really looking forward to exploring more of the courses. It would be fantastic if there was a way to build a favorites list, then easily share that with my clients. I’ve found that anything I can do to lower the barriers to getting started (one of which can be an overwhelming array of choices), the higher the likelihood that a client will try something. Maybe this option already exists. Guess I need to do some exploring.
Thanks Insight Timer for developing my favorite app!

Insight Timer is by far the best meditation app available, I’ve tried all the top apps and nothing compares. Most of the other major meditation apps are focused on selling you hardware or a subscription - Insight Timer is free and has additional content you can pay for but it’s not built as a “money machine” the way the others are. Plus, there are legitimately excellent, experienced and trained meditation instructors like Tara Brach who post free guided meditations to get you started. My only “complaint,” if you can even call it that, is that there is now a TON of essentially worthless “woo-woo” visualization exercises and “healings” posted by an increasing number of “meditation teachers” who clearly have no training or credentials and are just using InsightTimer to build an audience for their personal brand. It didn’t used to be like that, but now it’s common to see three pieces of new-age nonsense for every one actual guided meditation. I worry a bit that beginning meditators would easily get sidetracked down an endless rabbit hole of “mind candy” and miss the core point of meditation - training the mind to be present, empty, and completely open.

This was a great app I used for many years, I think close to 10. Insight Timer provided a nice structure for my practice sittings. Also had a great format to connect with others I met at meditation retreats and such, and see how many people around the planet were meditating at the same time – cool! Unfortunately, in the past few years they have made it more commercialized with all sorts of intrusive video and audio recordings and live workshops, as well as making a more sophisticated profile of me linked to other health related apps. There are so many other apps out there doing that already and I am disappointed Insight Timer could not remain a simple helpful tool. I’m not a fan of self-help culture, especially when meditation practice fully opens the door to self-growth without requiring guided self-affirmations and reassurances from strangers on the internet I find mindfulness practice is a true internal source of strength and wellness all by itself. With the most recent updates (Fall 2021) they added smiley-faced feedback after each meditation setting! That was really too much for me. I don’t see how their new anxious commercialization and overactive self-help mindset fits the spirit of meditative transformational practice like it used to. Sadly had to delete InsightTimer .

I really love InsightTimer. I’ve been using it for several years now, paid and unpaid, and it does not disappoint. I have tried other products and they do not work as well. Unlike other consumers, I do not want a social network, I want a sleep app, and this one absolutely does the trick. The problem is data collection and an utter lack of any privacy rights, including third party giveaways. I was completely prepared to renew the paid version, and then I fully read the, in my opinion, wholly illusory “Privacy Policy”.
However, I have requested opt outs and “shine the light” under the California privacy rights laws TWICE and I have heard nothing. (I understand that InsightTimer uses Google Cloud AI; there are cookies that can stay in place for two years. This, it seems, has added to the value of InsightTimer due to automation eliminating costly pesky customer service.) Now, perhaps other people are just hunky-dory with giving literally all of their personal information out with no limits, but I’m not one of them. I’m waiting to renew until I hear something about addressing my legal California privacy rights. (I’ve read in other places that there is little customer service for InsightTimer and I believe it.) Just do the right thing.

I've been using Insight Timer for many years. It is by far the best meditation timer available on iOS. Over the years the developer has added various other aspects, but the Timer was always front and center. Some of the newer aspects included meditaitons, which I greatly appreciate. I was able to add my favoruites and access timer and mediations from a simple home screen and turn off or ignore the "social" aspects which become more dominant in InsightTimer . (No, I dont want to know how many people have meditated with me today!)
But the recent update has really turned me off. To start, InsightTimer launches with a daily quote. When I wake up in the morning and reach for my phone to start a meditation session, the LAST thing I want is someone's quote floating around in my head. There is no way to turn off this so-called "feature". And now the social aspects are front and center and very annoying. No, I dont want InsightTimer to ask me "How are you doing today"!
I'd like to suggest to the developer to read the recent comments here as I see that MANY other people are as annoyed as I am. Please do not abandon your roots. Please return the basic simplicity and functionality of InsightTimer , and let those who want the other features to access them without (disrespectfully) shoving them in front of everyone's face. Thank you.

I love InsightTimer and use it daily. There are so many content options it’s a bit two sided—it’s a lot to sort through. My biggest pretty please wish is that it return to saving my preference to sort my bookmarks from short to long. It used to remember the last sort setting, but for some reason it was taken away (and the bookmarks kind of buried) a couple of versions ago.

Edit: I still enjoy InsightTimer, but with each new version I’m a little disappointed. I had liked the opening screen with the map of where people were meditating, but also that it wasn’t more than that, as meditation is a private thing. A quiet connection felt much more comfortable. It feels much more commercial now—I’m constantly being advertised at with smiling headshots. I doubt that would change if I subscribed, and I’d prefer to buy rather than rent InsightTimer anyway. It’s also constantly being redesigned, making it hard to know where to find things. And the last update completely took away the ability for me to sort my bookmarked meditations from shortest to longest, which I really preferred as my default and used to be able to set it to.

I use to love InsightTimer and for years it was my favorite app, but it no longer is able to manage it’s basic functionality. The timer function constantly pauses during calls and won’t restart no matter what, or just completely shuts down during sessions. The Insight support usually has the same tired response, re-download it etc. etc, but nothing is working. That and InsightTimer would also loose my day count for meditation whenever I flew out of my time zone.

InsightTimer was sold several years ago and their became a rapid shift towards competing with other mindfulness apps like Headspace and Calm. It is clear that the new developers are much more interested in creating a new age social network and promoting different healers, many of which seem unvetted. All of this functionality seems fine, but to let go of the basic timer function is disappointing and doesn’t seem like much of a technological challenge.

Bottom line this should be called INSIGHT SOCIAL NETWORK or CHEAP GURU, but when TIMER is in your name and you can’t even keep time, what’s the point. They also don’t really give a crap about customer complaints because this is now years that I have been dealing with this issue. In the end, I lost my Zen due to my meditation timer app which is a dark joke in itself. Goodbye insight!

Like many other reviewers, I have tried and tested many different forms of meditation. I tried Headspace (and liked it!), but it never stuck. I am a YOGA TEACHER, and yet, to my disappointment, I simply couldn’t turn a personal meditation practice into a daily habit. Skeptical but re-inspired, I downloaded Insight Timer. I tried a 5-minute loving-kindness mediation and felt invigorated. I’ve had InsightTimer for four days and have meditated everyday since (sometimes twice in one day!). It’s easily become habit - suddenly - given the great magnitude and variety of resources on InsightTimer. I LOVE how you can search for anything (and find it, no doubt), listen to different voices and techniques every time, AND it’s free. There is a premium option, but unlike many other apps, the abundance of free perks on this one makes it easy and simple to use without concern to upgrade — they’re not trying to trick you one bit! (Thank you, Insight Timer, for making InsightTimer free and accessible to all folks with smart phones.)
I love InsightTimer. And for the first time in my life, I not only turn inward regularly - rather, I eagerly look forward meditating every day.

Running a $6 million a year engineering company & dealing with everything else in life took me to a place where my mind never stopped racing thinking about the problem from yesterday and the possible problem tomorrow. After looking at the free app on my IPAD for many, many years, I decided to go for the premium edition & do some on-line meditation classes. Now I get it. I still think about the problems from yesterday and I still plan for tomorrow’s problems, but it is done when I decide it is time to do it, not continuously. I am calmer, more focused, & far better equipped to handle whatever comes my way. But the best part is, I can now fully enjoy going for a run, pumping heavy iron in the gym, spending time with my wife, watching a movie, picking up the phone to reconnect with a friend, and all the other things that are so important in addition to work. All the hype in the wellness literature is correct - meditation done properly ( which to me doesn’t mean rigidly and hardcore with a specific set of rules beyond doing it and being open ) is life changing. Give yourself a real gift this year, sign up for premium, pay the money, take a beginner’s class, and buckle up for an amazing adventure. As the add on TV says, “I’m a member for life”, because it has given me a new one and I love the benefits of a 10 to 15 minute a day guided meditation practice.

I initially downloaded InsightTimer for the timer - a nice variety of authentic sounding bowls, blocks, and chimes. Fast forward four years and I'm continually blown away by the incredible amount and quality of the guided meditation content now available here! All for free!! With new recordings arriving each day, there's everything from basic breath work and mindfulness practices, to creative visualization and hypnotherapy, Yoga Nidra, meditations on specific topics (I've noticed everything from improving your ball game to having a healthy pregnancy!), children's meditations, meditations in a variety of foreign languages, music, and spiritual talks. While most of the offerings seem to be pretty secular, there are some which might appeal more specifically to people with backgrounds in Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and probably other religions as well. There's everything from world renown spiritual leaders to up and coming teachers from around the world. I've found some real gems here and have bookmarked many more than I'll probably ever get to as I keep coming back to some favorites. I haven't gotten into the social aspect of InsightTimer, but that is also there for people who want that. I do enjoy seeing the charts of my practice over time and feel more centered and able to cope with life as I enjoy realizing the personal goals I've set. Thank you!!

I remember using InsightTimer a couple years ago to help keep me on track with a consistent meditation practice. InsightTimer was smooth and supportive of the user, without being too intrusive. I was happy for them and teachers everywhere who could later offer guided courses for a fee; they should be compensated for their effort and time to provide such courses. Yet, you could remain a free user, without pressure to buy in to courses or subscriptions.

I re-downloaded it today. I intended to remain a free user as I always had before. I was disappointed to see that the landing page (the earth icon at the bottom) showed their own advertisement for Member Plus, effectively forcing free users to see the ad every time they use InsightTimer for the timer feature, as there is no way to hide the ad that is part of the page itself.

I understand InsightTimer has to evolve and grow to sustain itself and survive; that’s the basis (and unfortunate consequence) of capitalism. Still, I recall the message sent to users before subscriptions and other paid services rolled out, promising to not force users to pay to use InsightTimer , that it would always be optional, and that they would stay true to that freedom. And while indeed they’ve kept the free timer in place, it feels not without constant marketed persuasion.

InsightTimer offers so much to so many people—Much more than a meditation timer! It offers free and low cost talks on many aspects of life, guided meditations, groups, short courses, connections to other meditators, inspiration and more. Need help with relaxing? Or calming anxiety, working with depression, chronic pain, sleeplessness, body image? All of these and more are here.

The teachers include those who are enlightened and share their peace, wise and humble teachers who share their understanding from years on the path, beloved for their human qualities of sincerity, vulnerability and compassion. Since there are many facets to inner deepening and many places to begin or delve deeply—this is a wonderful tool/app and I thank its creators and all who participate as guides and as participants.

I do have a few requests. Is it possible to get a pure clear tone on the timer? An example would be Eckhart Tolle’s perfectly tuned and light, ringing chime. A second suggestion is an option for an array of seconds of a large quartz crystal singing bowl being toned around its perimeter. Both of these would be cleansing and beautiful to hear. Thank you.

I continue to use it daily, to time my zazen. The developers continue to improve the experience. It supports meditation of all sorts and all faiths. Very flexible, allowing me to choose timings to fit my day. I take it when I am on the road. It allows social connections to other meditators, if you wish, but that's far from necessary to get value. The reminder feature is nice, as are the record keeping features. Really appreciate the efforts to upgrade after seeking users' input. The newest version offers a great deal of customizable features so that practitioners can create an individual experience. I don't use the guided meditations, though those are plentiful and varied. The "groups" feature supports community of practice in a very customizable manner. There are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and non-denominational groups, as well as inter-faith and even humor groups.
There is considerable support to maintain a daily practice, including a 365 group, with a goal to sit each day in 2017.
It has earned a spot at the bottom of my iPhone screen, along with the phone app, mail, and safari.

I began using Insight Timer about four years ago before I became a certified mindfulness instructor. Each day my kindergarten class and I would sit down after recess to meditate with the timer. We gradually worked our way up to 10 minute meditations which gave them a sense of gratification. Often times we would try out the different background music and they often requested the monks chanting. 😊 Each day a different student would start us out by saying “please sit tall like a mountain, still like a frog on a log, and close your eyes gently”, and then ring our chime. Insight Timer was our daily companion in the classroom. I also created a group on Insight Timer for my fellow faculty members who became interested in meditating. I am now retired from teaching kindergarten and teach Mindfulness to adults in cancer recovery and have created our own group on Insight Timer.
My heart is so full of gratitude for your commitment to keeping Insight Timer free and also offering a paid option for courses. I will continue to use Insight Timer for my own personal practice.
Namasté 🙏🏼
Janet