Sound and meditation
Eighty pieces to listen to, in four families of twenty.
Ambient tones, sounds recorded outdoors, spoken sessions, and a set where one sound travels around you while a bed sits still. Twenty in each family, eighty in all. Eight of them come inside the app download and are free for everyone, along with the sleep sound and alarm screen. The other 72 are fetched on demand and are part of Pro.
It is a library of things to listen to. ShiftKit makes no claim about what any of them will do to you.
The four families
Twenty in each, and they do not all behave the same way
Three families loop and can be left running overnight. The spoken sessions have an end, so they are not offered as an overnight sound or an alarm.
Ambient
Twenty pieces of tones, noise and held notes. Nothing in this family was recorded outdoors.
Loops. Can be used overnight and as an alarm sound.
Nature
Twenty recordings made outdoors, mostly in Australia.
Loops. Can be used overnight and as an alarm sound.
Guided
Twenty sessions with a voice giving instructions. There is a different voice on each one. The voices are synthesised.
Has an end rather than a loop. Not offered overnight or as an alarm.
Immersive 3D
Twenty pieces where one sound travels around you on a path while a bed stays where it is.
Loops. Can be used overnight and as an alarm sound.
How the immersive ones work
The sound is placed around you as it plays, not recorded that way
An immersive piece is a short mono character sound and a still bed. The character sound is positioned in three dimensions while you listen and moved along a path, so its place around you is worked out on the device rather than baked into a file.
- Twelve path shapes: orbit, rising spiral, figure eight, vertical eight, overhead pass, approach and recede, pendulum, corkscrew, descending helix, wide circle, slow arc, and a random walk.
- One full lap takes between 20 and 90 seconds, depending on the path. The slowness is deliberate: a fast orbit reads as a novelty, a slow one reads as movement.
- Because the position is worked out as it plays, no two laps land the same way twice. There is no fixed recording to learn by heart.
- It works on any headphones. On AirPods it also follows your head, so the sound stays where it was put when you turn.
- A mono character sound and a bed weigh very little next to a long multi-channel recording of the same movement, so twenty of these cost almost nothing to keep on the device.
Plain words for what this is
This is spatial audio: a sound placed around you and moved while it plays. It is not a cinema format and it is not a surround mix of a recording. The whole effect is the position of one sound changing over time.
Why do it live
A path, not a performance
A recorded orbit is the same orbit every night. A path drawn at run time keeps the same character without repeating itself, and the file behind it stays small.
The bed underneath does not move. Only the character sound travels, which is what makes the movement legible on ordinary headphones.
What is on the device
Eight come with the app. The other 72 arrive when you ask for them
Eight pieces are inside the app download and are free for everyone, so there is something to listen to the first time you open it without waiting on anything.
- The remaining 72 are part of Pro. They are fetched one at a time, and only when you choose that piece. Nothing is downloaded in the background on the chance you might want it.
- The app is not a 200 MB download, and you are not storing eighty files you will never play.
- Anything you have downloaded can be removed again, and fetched once more later if you want it back.
One at a time
You choose what lands on the phone
Downloading a piece is an action you take, the same way logging a shift is. The list shows what is already on the device and what is not.
Overnight and the alarm
A sound to sleep to, and one to wake up to
Ambient, Nature and Immersive can each be set as the overnight sound and as the alarm sound. They loop, so they hold for as long as you leave them running.
- The screen is free, and so is the alarm: a wake time you set, a fade-in ramp, snooze, and backstop repeats. The overnight session, the dark screen that plays a sound all night, is free as well, and any of the eight sounds in the app download can be used for either.
- A fade eases the sound out after a set time rather than stopping it dead.
- Guided is not offered in either place, and the app does not list it there. A voice giving instructions is neither a sound to sleep through nor a sound to be woken by.
- Audio you choose for bedtime and alarm sounds is kept on the device, and only you can read it.
Your own music
Or play something of your own instead
If none of the library pieces is what you want, you can play your own music from your library in their place.
- Your library is your own. ShiftKit reads what you pick to play it and keeps no copy of it.
- The rest of the screen behaves the same way, so the timer and the fade still apply.
No ceremony
The library is an offer, not a requirement
Some people want a held note and some people want their own record. Both are a list to choose from, and neither is treated as the correct answer.
What it is part of
Eight are free. Pro opens the other 72
The sleep sound and alarm screen is free, with eight pieces inside the app download. The rest of the library sits with the Breathing & Meditation feature, which is part of Pro.
- Free: the sleep sound and alarm screen, the wake alarm, the overnight session, the Do Not Disturb hand-off, and the eight sounds in the app download.
- Pro: the other 72 pieces, fetched on demand, across the ambient, nature and immersive families and the twenty guided sessions.
- Pro: paced breathing, with the phase named as it changes, and a plain timer for sitting in silence.
- Your own music, in place of any of it.
- The minutes can go across to the Health app.
Worth saying plainly
A routine, not a remedy
ShiftKit does not say what listening to any of this will do for you. It gives you something to put on at a time you chose, and counts the minutes if you want them counted.
Before you start
A tool for you, not a record for anyone else
ShiftKit is not a medical device. It does not diagnose anything, it does not assess fitness for duty, and it is not an approved system of record. Do not put patient-identifying information or incident numbers into it. Everything it shows you is a summary of what you chose to log, held in your own iCloud.