I explored several meditation apps, hoping to find something simple that would help me sit quietly and keep track of time.
Instead, I found courses, programmes, streaks, goals, subscriptions, statistics, guided sessions, recommendations, and large libraries of sounds. These features may be useful to many people, but they created another set of decisions at the exact moment I wanted fewer decisions.
I tried using the regular timer on my phone. For reasons I still do not completely understand, it never worked well for meditation. Perhaps it felt too much like an alarm. Perhaps it was the way it interrupted the session. Whatever the reason, I kept wishing for something quieter and more purposefully limited.
Eventually, I decided to build it myself.
The guiding idea was not to create a better meditation platform. It was to create almost nothing: only the essentials required to begin a session and know when the time had passed.
The result is Still Mind, a small meditation timer that sits on my phone Home Screen. It measures time in fifteen-minute intervals, can play the sound of flowing water, and rings a temple bell as each interval ends. That is its entire purpose.
You can try it here:
Building it became an exercise in removing things. Every heading, instruction, colour, button, and option had to earn its place. Most did not. With each removal, the experience became closer to what I originally wanted: tap once, put the phone down, and meditate.
I have also published the source code for anyone who wants to download it, modify it, or make a personal version:
View the Still Mind source code
Sometimes the right tool is not the one with the most features. It is the one that quietly gets out of the way.