Comparison

Bathysphere vs Ocean Digest

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Bathysphere

Features
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A living deep-sea aquarium for your Home Screen. Your widgets become brass portholes, and on the other side of the glass glowing creatures glide past in real, continuous motion. PORTHOLES THAT SHARE THE WATER Line up portholes in a Home Screen row, give them the same depth, and set each one's Position in Edit Widget. Now they look into the same water. A siphonophore that drifts out of one porthole turns up in the next, after slipping behind your app icons. ONE OCEAN FOR EVERYONE The sea is worked out from the current UTC time, so every Bathysphere on Earth shows the same creature at the same moment. No server is involved. Every iPhone does the same arithmetic and arrives at the same ocean. TAP THE GLASS Tap a porthole on your Home Screen and a flash fires. Whatever is passing is photographed into your field journal as a painted naturalist plate, with its name, its depth and a NEW badge the first time you catch it. You don't have to open the app. THE LEVIATHAN Once every UTC day, the Leviathan passes every porthole. The Almanac announces the time in advance. Be watching. 21 SPECIES IN THREE ZONES Twilight, 200 to 1,000 m: lanternfish, hatchetfish, firefly squid, giant siphonophore, glass squid and, rarely, a sperm whale. Midnight, 1,000 to 4,000 m: anglerfish, Atolla jellyfish, comb jelly, stoplight loosejaw dragonfish, vampire squid and the gulper eel. Abyss, 4,000 to 6,000 m: dumbo octopus, sea pig, tripod fish and snailfish. Four legends: fish that William Beebe reported from his Bathysphere dives off Bermuda in 1932 and 1934, and that no one has confirmed since. The five-lined constellationfish, the pallid sailfin, the untouchable bathysphere fish and the abyssal rainbow gar. One myth: the Leviathan. That one is ours. WIDGETS Porthole comes in three sizes: a small round porthole, a wide medium viewport, and the large captain's porthole, whose brass plaque counts down to the next sighting. On the Lock Screen, Sonar sweeps for creatures closing in on your portholes, Depth Log shows the next sighting with a live countdown, and a one-line inline widget tells you when the Leviathan is due. In Control Center, the Flash control photographs every porthole at once. IN THE APP Dive: a full-screen live porthole with a zone selector, a shutter and optional hydrophone ambience. Journal: your plates. Species you have not found yet wait as silhouettes. Each plate opens to facts and your own sighting log. Almanac: upcoming sightings, the Leviathan's transit and rare visitors. Tap Remind me for a local notification. Portholes: a setup guide for widget positions, plus a matching hull wallpaper you can save to Photos. Settings: Motion (Smooth, Calm, or Automatic, which switches to Calm in Low Power Mode) and optional location, so the Twilight zone follows your real sunlight. ACCESSIBILITY With Reduce Motion on, portholes hold a still scene. VoiceOver describes what is passing. The app supports Dynamic Type. NO ACCOUNT, NO ADS Bathysphere is free, with no ads and no account to make. It works offline and sends nothing to us, so there is nothing to track and no data collected. Your journal lives on your iPhone. EXPEDITION, OPTIONAL Expedition is an optional membership. It opens the Hydrothermal Vents, a new zone of black smokers with its own creatures, and includes future zones and creatures as they arrive. The Twilight, Midnight and Abyss zones, their 21 creatures and every widget stay free. Choose a weekly or a yearly plan. Payment is charged to your Apple Account, and the plan renews automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the period, in Settings under your name, Subscriptions. Family Sharing is included. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://bathysphere.netlify.app/privacy.html Requires iOS 26 or later.

About

Ocean Digest

Features
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Build a little aquarium, then watch it swim on your Home Screen. Ocean Digest is a living fish tank you design in the app. Pick your fish, arrange coral and shells, choose the water, and your tank moves onto small, medium, large and extra-large widgets where the fish keep swimming all day. BUILD YOUR TANK - Choose from more than 100 fish and sea creatures, from goldfish and guppies to clownfish, seahorses, koi, cichlids and showy bettas whose fins and tails ripple as they swim - Drag props right on your tank and pinch to resize them: coral, sea fans, conch shells, crystals, anchors, treasure chests and more - Pick a tank style named for Trinidad and Tobago: Nylon Pool, Maracas Sunset, Caroni Swamp, Pitch Lake and Bioluminescent Bay - Choose a sand floor (golden, black, white, reef, red, pond mud or rainbow gravel) or open water - Turn on time-of-day light, bubbles, a clock and date, and set fish size and swim speed ON YOUR HOME SCREEN - Live fish on small, medium, large and extra-large widgets - Choose which tank each widget shows - Turn widget animation off any time for a still picture of your tank GLOW IN THE DARK Deep-sea jellyfish, anglerfish and hatchetfish that glow with their own soft light. ONE AQUARIUM, EVERY DEVICE - Your tanks sync through iCloud across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV - Change a tank on any device and it updates everywhere - On Mac, watch it in a window or your menu bar; on Apple TV, it fills the screen FREE TO START Start free with the starter fish and one tank. A one-time Unlock Everything purchase, on any of your devices, adds every fish, every prop pack, Color Studio recoloring, the Porthole window and Wander, and up to 10 tanks, on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. No subscription, no account, no ads. Questions or ideas? Tap Send feedback in Settings. We read every message. Terms of Use: https://hellogoodday.com/oceandigest/terms Privacy Policy: https://hellogoodday.com/oceandigest/privacy

Screenshots

Bathysphere4 screens
Ocean Digest4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is device support: Ocean Digest at 4 against Bathysphere's 1. Ocean Digest also leads on iOS requirement (17.4 vs 26.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Bathysphere sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per 7 days and Ocean Digest sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

Scorecard2 real differences ยท 4 level
Bathysphere versus Ocean Digest: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBathysphereOcean Digest
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyโ€”Weekly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV โ€” better
Requires iOS26.017.4 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size46 MB228 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperNo Worries! Lifestyle, LLCHello Good Day LLC

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Bathysphere

Subscriptions2
  • Expedition Weekly$2.997 Days
  • Expedition Yearly$14.991 Year
1 purchases

Ocean Digest

One-time1
  • Unlock Everything$9.99

Questions

Is Bathysphere free?
Bathysphere is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Ocean Digest free?
Ocean Digest is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Bathysphere or Ocean Digest have ads?
Neither Bathysphere nor Ocean Digest shows ads.

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