You can optionally select one of 19 ambient sounds: Moonlight, Zen guitar, Eternal stream, Deep Om, Raindrops, Bird song, Celtic harmony, Nature’s melody, Ocean wave, Reflections, Stillness, Tibetan sunrise, Angel choir, Enchanting, Into the wild, Limitless, Lucid dream, Secret garden, and Winter fire. The possibilities here are intriguing but it feels like the user interface is not well designed for the simple and common case of a single bell repeating at a regular interval. You can even set multiple different bells to create some elaborate pattern of intervals.

You can set any number of interval bells. Most of the singing bowls are named after places in Tibet. You may be wondering where all these exotic names come from. It’s even possible to do this for interval bells, which are optional (this makes no sense to me).

Gong Hanchi is perhaps my favourite of all the sounds, but this large gong is perhaps a little overblown for a typical meditation session!.

Ombu, Zhada, and Shürong are larger, deeper singing bowls.

Sakya is a small singing bowl, but not quite as high pitch as Basu.

Kangsê and Dêngzê are medium sized singing bowls.

Wood Block is a short but pleasant sound of wood knocking together.

Basu is nice little high pitched singing bowl, which feels perfect for ending a meditation.

You can set the bell to strike 1, 2, or 3 times for each start, end, or interval bell. You can set any of the 10 bell types as starting bell, ending bell, or interval bells. The timer has plenty of options (perhaps a little too many).įirstly, there’s a good choice of bells, all of which have good quality audio. Insight Timer’s Meditation Timer The Timer screen is highly configurable but sometimes feels more complex than it needs to be But first, let’s look at the timer feature, because it is actually pretty good. So it is as a social meditation platform that I will judge Insight Timer in this review. If you’re looking for just a simple timer, look elsewhere (I can recommend MindBell on Android, and I’ll be reviewing some iOS meditation timers in future). Rather, it’s a social meditation platform that includes a timer and a whole lot more. Insight Timer is not really a meditation timer app, despite the name. Judged purely as a no-nonsense meditation timer, I’d have to give Insight Timer a poor review.īut as I started playing with Insight Timer in preparation for this review, I realised that perhaps I was being unfair. After registering, my frustration continued because it seemed commercial, and cluttered with social features that don’t help me meditate. What was all this about? I just wanted a simple timer. Firstly, because I had to register before I could even use the timer. Insight Timer is the most popular meditation timer in the App Store, and I had heard of friends using it.

In other words, I wanted bells, not beeping. I was looking for a timer designed for meditation, rather than the in-built timer in Apple’s Clock app. I first tried Insight Timer because I wanted a simple meditation timer on iPad. Mobile App Review Icon App Name Insight Timer - Meditation App Developer Insight Network, Inc.

Zen timer for meditation