Ensō | Meditation Timer & Bell

I love this beautiful app. I’ve tried a number of different meditation apps, and this is the best for my needs. The ability to turn-off social features is a plus, as is the ability to play a playlist from music on the device or just sit silently. I suppose it would be easy to use this feature to play a recorded “guided” meditation from any source, if in the correct format. I need to give that a try. It seems that the timer doesn’t record sessions which end before the originally scheduled time, unless I’ve missed something. If you plan 20 minutes, but sit for only 10, then you get no record of it in the app or in Apple Health. The ability to record an interrupted session would be a welcome addition, as would open-ended sessions. I like to record Tai Chi as “moving meditation.” To do that, the timer would have to allow for an indefinite time. I second Poppy-A-K’s request for a three bell option at the end of a session. Anyone looking for a simple, elegant meditation timer, should really give it a chance. Well done!

The free bell tone is nice--not too high or annoying; the design is minimalist and pleasing; and--most important to me, for my own needs--the count-doen timer has an optional setting that allows the user to see only a circle "disappearing" in a clockwise motion, and no numbers. That isn't actually important to me for my own meditation, but I use it during my work with children (who either don't understand time or generally get fidgety about *time*)--the simple circle option is even calming for then. I'd get the paid version (& likely will anyway), but the two features I'd want added aren't (unless I'm missing something) provided in the paid version: (1) the ability to separate, or just even delete, certain "sessions" (so that my work-related use isn't counted as my own meditation use), and (2) the option of three bell strikes at the end of session (which is typical of the meditation I practice). Again, though, great app!

In general, I like it. I like the clean interface. Good sounds. Feels a little pricey at $6 for premium plus all the bells, but I wanted the Apple Health integration, presets, and more bell options. But the presets do abolutely nothing, as far as I can tell. I've read the FAQs. The timers on the Set Timers screen are *always* how I last left them. Presets have no effect on them whatsoever. Toggling a timer on in Settings doesn't change them. And setting the time window for a preset for it to be automatically enabled by the intelligent preset feature does nothing. It's kinda maddening. Also, choosing a preset shouldn't be buried in Settings--it would be much better to have it quickly accessible, right there on the Timer tab. I've used the app 6 times now, and it's worked fine for all but one sitting. That one time, I heard the start bell and then...nothing. I had it set for a 20 minute meditation with a 10 minute interval bell. I eventually stopped my sitting, checked the clock and realized it had been 32 minutes. Checked the app, and it wasn't even running. And it had no record of my sitting. So I guess it just crashed at some point after the starting bell. Developer doesn't appear to be responsive: I've submitted one question (about the presets), one feature request (add option to allow start/interval/end bells to ring more than once), and one bug report (above), and have received no reply, and not even an auto-response. Zenso looks to be the best alternative for me.