All About Apps
Meditation app suggestions
Insight Timer
Entry Price: Free
Insight Timer has a huge library of content: over 80,000 free guided meditations from over 10,000 teachers on topics like stress, relationships, healing, sleep, creativity, and more.
Paid option: For $60 per year (with a 30-day free trial), you get access to courses with well-known teachers, the ability to download meditations and listen offline, and advanced player functions like repeat mode and fast forward and rewind.
Meditation app suggestions
Smiling Mind
Entry Price: Free
Smiling Mind hits the sweet spot for a free mindfulness app in so many ways.
The not-for-profit app features hundreds of meditations, enough to keep you engaged without overwhelming you with choice. They are organized into structured programs like Mindful Foundations (35 sessions), Sleep (6 sessions), Digital Detox (8 sessions), and Stress Management (10 sessions), but you have the flexibility to choose where to start and to easily jump between programs.
Meditation app suggestions
UCLA Mindful App
Entry Price: Free
Developed by the Mindful Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the app features about a dozen meditations of different types. You can learn to focus on your breath, your body, or sounds; work with difficult emotions; and cultivate loving-kindness in sessions ranging from 3 to 19 minutes long.
If you’re new to mindfulness, you might choose to take advantage of their Getting Started section, which offers information on what mindfulness is, how to choose a meditation, which posture is best for your practice, and what research-backed benefits you might expect from it.
Meditation app suggestions
Healthy Minds Program App
Entry Price: Free
The Healthy Minds Program app wants to help you develop the skills for a healthy mind—by strengthening mental focus, decreasing stress, and growing resilience, compassion, and better immune health.
Founded by neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson, the app integrates neuroscience and research-based techniques with meditation training to increase overall well-being. The app offers a collection of 27 meditations outside their four-pillar wellness framework, including one-minute Micro Practices for when you’re in need of a brief respite.
Meditation app suggestions
Mindfulness Coach
Entry Price: Free
The app is appropriate for anyone, it provides a step-by-step, self-guided training program to adopt your own mindfulness practice. The app is well designed and easy to browse, with a variety of lessons and meditations, though its content library is small compared to apps which offer premium subscriptions.
Meditation app suggestions
Ten Percent Happier
Entry Price: Free
You may be familiar with author Dan Harris and the book that Ten Percent Happier is based on; if you’re not, you’ll find that the meditation app is part of an entire ecosystem that includes a bestselling book, podcast, newsletter, and more. The app builds a personalized mindfulness plan for you based on a questionnaire and can set up daily meditation reminders.