stilltime vs Quell

stilltime is a singing bowl and a timer. Not only for meditation — for focus, for breathing, for any few quiet minutes. Tap the bowl and it rings. Drag your finger around the rim to keep it singing; press and hold to quiet it. It sounds like a real bowl and, on your phone, feels like one — every strike and every turn of the rim has its own haptic. Set a length and the timer runs. Add a moment to settle in first, and interval bells along the way if you want them. When the time is up, the bowl sounds again. Every session is kept — in a calm record inside the app, and in Apple Health as mindful minutes. You'll see your streak and the time you've sat, laid out plainly. No badges, nothing that nags you to come back. Free, always. The timer, the house bowl, and the whole record cost nothing. THE RESONANCE COLLECTION A one-time unlock: four more bowls, each a real recorded instrument with its own voice, their matching app icons, and a mood layer on your record. DEEP FOCUS Quiet the apps that pull at you for the length of a session. Open one out of habit and the bowl rings to bring you back. Optional; requires iOS 26.5 or later — everything else works on iOS 17 and up. No account. No ads. No tracking. Your sessions sync privately through your own iCloud — nothing reaches us.

Quell is a deep-focus app with one job: help you sit down and do one undivided thing. No streaks. No badges. No feed. You tap Begin, a calm arctic ring starts counting up, and a 40 Hz binaural beat plays underneath. When you are done, you end. That is the whole ritual. WHY 40 Hz 40 Hz is the gamma band — the brain rhythm tied to attention and memory, and the most-studied frequency in sound-based focus research. Quell generates it live: two pure tones, one slightly different in each ear, that your brain fuses into a single 40 Hz pulse. WHAT IT DOES - A 40 Hz binaural beat, generated live on your device. Two pure tones on a deep, warm carrier (130 Hz left, 170 Hz right). It needs stereo headphones to create the beat. - An optional coach voice. Short, grounded lines, spaced minutes apart, that nudge you back when your attention drifts. It is sports-psychology self-talk, not generic meditation, and it is a natural recorded voice, not a robotic one. - Optional music under the beat. Four moods of original, AI-generated tracks (lofi days, lofi night, global beats, ambient) that sit quietly beneath everything. Off by default. - A count-up timer. No fixed length, no pressure. The session lasts as long as you stay. THE SCIENCE, HONESTLY We lead with 40 Hz because the research is real — it is the gamma approach popularized on the Huberman Lab podcast. A 2022 meta-analysis found binaural beats gave a small but significant lift to attention and memory, and a 2025 study confirmed that a 40 Hz beat measurably entrains the brain while improving attention. But we will not oversell it: not every study agrees, and the effect varies from person to person. Treat the 40 Hz tone as a low-risk way to settle into deep work, not a guarantee. DESIGNED TO DISAPPEAR Quell is dark, still, and quiet on purpose. The only bright thing is the ring. It keeps playing while your screen is off, with controls on the lock screen, so you can put the phone down and work. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Everything runs on your device. No account, no sign-in, no tracking, no analytics, no servers. Your settings stay on your phone. FREE AND PAID The 40 Hz beat and the timer are free, forever. A single one-time purchase unlocks the music moods and the coach voice. Pay once, it is yours. No subscription. Quell. Quiet the noise.