Transcend Timer vs Cairn

Transcend Timer is a timer for Transcendental Meditation. It does one thing: it holds the length of your practice so you do not have to. Three phases. Warm Up to settle in, Meditation, then Rest. Set each one once and press play — the home screen shows the plan, so starting is never a decision. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO No guided voices. No courses, no narrators, no daily episode, no library to look through. Nothing plays unless you turn it on: the start and end sounds and the haptics are all off by default, because in TM the mantra is the technique and a bell is an interruption. THE SCREEN TELLS YOU WHERE YOU ARE Each phase has its own background, ordered by brightness rather than colour. Warm Up steps down toward meditation, meditation is nearly black, and rest lifts sharply. That lift is the largest change in light in the whole session and it happens the moment meditation ends — perceptible through a closed eyelid, so you can stay where you are until it comes. If you do open your eyes to check the time, the timer is large, centred, and set in figures that do not shift as they count down. PROGRESS Two counters: days you meditated, and days you meditated twice. A monthly calendar shows the shape of your practice — missed, once, twice — and pages back through every month you have kept. Completed sessions are written to Apple Health as Mindful Sessions. APPLE WATCH Run a full session from your wrist and leave the phone in another room. The Digital Crown sets the durations. The Smart Stack shows which phase you are in and how long is left. IF YOU WANT IT Curated sounds for the start and end of meditation, with their own volume so a cue can carry through twenty minutes of closed eyes. Ambiance: one looping sound that fades in as the session begins and out across the rest phase, at a volume set deliberately lower. Eight themes, each changing all four phases together and keeping the same order of light. Night dimming for sessions in the dark. Pause and resume, counting active time only. A daily reminder, if you set one. PRIVACY No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, no network requests. Your preferences stay on your device. Health data is read only to calculate your streaks and never leaves the phone. Transcend Timer is an independent app. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any Transcendental Meditation organisation, and it does not teach the technique.

Cairn is a private journal that lives entirely on your phone. No account. No cloud. No tracking. Everything you write — and everything Cairn notices about it — stays on your device. WRITE HOWEVER YOU WANT Type it, speak it, or scan a handwritten page. Cairn turns voice notes and photos of your notebook into entries, all processed on-device. Your audio and images never leave your phone. NOT SURE WHERE TO START Tap "Help me journal" and Cairn asks one gentle question at a time, helping you find the words — then keeps them as your entry. EVERY ENTRY IS A STONE Over days and weeks, your entries stack into a cairn — a quiet marker of the road you've walked. Cairn reflects your moods, your recurring themes, and the patterns you might not notice yourself: a Trail of your days, a Mood Map, a feel for your Terrain. GENTLE WHEN IT COUNTS Cairn reflects, it doesn't diagnose. No labels, no scores pretending to be clinical truth. On the hard days, it sets the analysis aside and simply makes room. PRIVATE BY DESIGN - Fully on-device — works offline, no sign-up - Nothing is uploaded, shared, or sold - Lock your journal behind Face ID WHAT IT COSTS Cairn is free to download, and everything is open for your first 14 days. After that, a single purchase unlocks Cairn permanently — one payment, no subscription, now or ever. If you don't buy it, nothing you wrote is taken away: your entries stay readable, searchable and exportable for as long as you keep the app. The unlock is for what comes next — new entries, reflection, and the patterns Cairn draws from your writing. Bought Cairn before it went free? It stays unlocked. You'll never be asked to pay again. Journal. Reflect. Grow.