Rooms of moving light, each breathing with a hum you tune yourself. Drag up and down and it slides from 60 to 600 Hz, the picture following.
There are no recordings in this app.
While you listen, your iPhone works out the wave afresh
A handful of pure tones, added together, for as long as you listen. There is no file of a bowl or a choir anywhere inside the app — the hum is arithmetic, which is why it can follow your finger.That is the rate on most phones and headphones.
Look for a hum to sit with and you find numbers with claims attached: 432 for a more natural tuning, 528 for repairing DNA, a set of “solfeggio” tones for guilt, fear and change. Sitting with a slow sound seemed genuinely pleasant. The claims are another matter — where they have been looked at, nothing has been shown, and most have never been studied at all.
So we didn't pick a number for you. We built a dial instead of a list, and put a picture on the end of it that moves with the sound. Drag until it feels right. That's the whole method, and we make no claim about what any frequency does.
The dial came first: one gesture, anywhere on the screen. Then a room to look at while you listen, drawn live and wired to the sound so it swells as the hum breathes and takes its colour from the note. Everything else followed from those two.
Drag up and down anywhere on a room and the hum slides across the whole decade, the picture following. Or tap the number at the top and dial one in exactly, on three number wheels.
Real-time graphics drawn by your iPhone, not videos. Tap to strike a singing bowl tuned to the hum; draw side to side to play a scale, each note its own colour; tilt the phone and some rooms lean with you.
It is for relaxation and enjoyment, and it is not a medical device. The Learn pages set out what followers of each named frequency say, and then, separately, what has actually been found.
No account, no internet connection, nothing to buy inside it. You pay once, and the only thing it asks of you after that is what sounds right.
— Ricky Chopra, who made this
Real screens from the app. The number at the top of every room is the hum; drag anywhere to move it. Turn the sound up — every room plays, and every room answers.
There are no recordings in this app. The hum is worked out while you listen — a handful of pure tones added together — and every slider in the sound tray is one part of that sum. Move them and it becomes a different instrument.
How the app starts. A few harmonics, a gentle beat, a little of the fifth and the undertones.
One clean tone, barely moving. The closest thing to a tuning fork.
Thin and high, with a long echo. Like a finger round the rim of a wine glass.
Low and heavy, deep in the undertones, breathing very slowly. Best in headphones.
Two voices, mouths closed, humming. Felt in the chest as much as heard.
Four voices singing an open aah, with room around them.
All eight harmonics at once: bright and buzzing, like an organ's reed pipes.
Soft, swaying slowly and a long way off. Pairs well with the sleep timer.
Eight sounds to start from. Each is only a way of setting the sliders — pick one, then move anything you like.
From the pure note alone up to eight harmonics sounding together. Low is a tuning fork; high turns reedy, like an organ.
The hum rises and falls like breathing, and the picture breathes with it — from one breath every fourteen seconds to one every three.
A second copy of the note, a hair apart, so the two slowly swell and fade against each other. It's what makes a sound feel alive rather than electronic.
The fifth above, for something open and wide, and undertones below. A phone can't play the lowest notes, so it plays the ones above them and your ear fills in the rest.
A throat and a mouth: a hum that moves from mmm through ooh to an open aah, with up to four voices blending like singers.
A gentle wobble in the pitch, up to a semitone, at the speed you choose — and an echo that repeats everything back, fading.
Tap the picture to strike a singing bowl, tuned to your hum. Its high tones die in a second; the low one rings for five or more.
Found one worth keeping? Save it under a name and it's in My sounds. The sleep timer fades the sound and the picture out over a minute, and the hum keeps playing if the phone locks first.
None of the eight is the right one. Pleasing is a matter of ear, and the sliders are all there so you can find your own.
Some frequencies come with a following. For each, here is what its followers say, as fairly as we can put it, and then the record: what has been studied and what was found. Nothing here is medical advice, and we make no claim about what any frequency does.
Instruments tuned so that A is 432 rather than the standard 440 sound warmer, and sit better with the body.
440 became the standard in 1939, by committee, not by nature — so there is nothing sacred about it either. A couple of small studies found listeners reporting themselves slightly calmer at 432. Nothing settled, in either direction.
The first of six “solfeggio” tones: it releases guilt and fear.
The solfeggio set was assembled in the 1990s by two American writers, from a reading of a medieval hymn and a numerological pass over the Book of Numbers. The tones are not ancient and were never a tuning. What is claimed for each has not been studied.
The second tone: it breaks up what is stuck and makes change possible.
The same origin as 396, and the same record: nothing studied, nothing shown, in either direction.
The third tone, and the famous one: transformation, and the repair of DNA.
The DNA claim traces to one writer in the 1990s and has no evidence behind it — a strand of DNA has no note. Some people find 528 a good note to sit with, which is a different claim, and a fair one.
The last three solfeggio tones: connection, then expression, then a return to order.
Unstudied, like the rest of the set. All three sit above the top of the dial, so the app can't play them — 528 and the dial's top, 600, are the near neighbours.
The Earth resonates at 7.83 Hz — the Schumann resonance — and tuning to it grounds you.
The resonance is real: an electrical ringing between the ground and the sky, set going by lightning. But it's far below anything you can hear as a note, and nothing links it to how you feel. No dial goes that low.
Sound or light pulsing forty times a second stirs a brain rhythm of the same rate.
This one has real research behind it — in mice, and in early human trials. It is early, and it is not a treatment. It sits just below the bottom of the dial.
A slightly different note in each ear makes the brain “beat” at the difference, and that rate calms or focuses you.
The beat is a real trick of hearing. Studies of what it does to mood are mixed, and small.
The ringing of a struck bowl settles the mind.
Small studies find people report feeling calmer after sound meditation — which is what people report about most quiet sitting. The bowl in every room is tuned to your hum.
The one that isn't on any list. Drag until the hum feels like it belongs to you.
That number is yours, and it's the only one we would stand behind. The app's Learn pages carry all of the above, with a button that sets the hum to each number the dial can reach.
Every one drawn live on your iPhone, every one answering the sound. These are the clips from the app's own shelf, in its order.
Mirror balls under coloured spots, growing and popping
Cages inside cages, turning against each other, breathing through one another
Two things eating each other: spots that split in two, worms that crawl, mazes that close over
Something grown rather than built: florets on florets, from space folded over on itself
A sphere of glowing cells, pushed into lobes, tumbling
A mirrored room of lights you tilt and shake
A Julia set alive: spirals coiling and uncoiling, lit in relief
Black and white rings interfering, moiré where they cross
Ink blooming on a card, mirrored
A loop of light tying and untying itself, a bundle of glowing strands
An engraved cage of coiling straps, the far side showing through the near
A shape that breathes and twists, throwing off rays of light
String art growing in a honeycomb, every curve morphing with the hum
A thousand bright shapes born at the centre, flying out
The op-art ball, squares growing from its centre, lit and turning
Sand on a vibrating plate: the hum draws the figure, the sand walks to it
Fans of see-through petals opening and closing, mirrored; the light is where they overlap
A chequerboard poured into one point and out of another, shrinking to nothing where they meet
Rainbow streaks in spiral arms, streaming out and turning
The toothed ring, the wheel, the pen in its hole, going round and round
A chequered ring, its squares screwing endlessly into a hole they never reach
A twisting tunnel of striped balls, and a light at the end
The Milky Way in black water, rippling to the hum
Fall forever down a tunnel of iridescent folds
It needs no account and no internet connection, and it makes no network connections at all. The sound is made on your iPhone, the pictures are drawn on your iPhone, and what you record goes to your own photo library.
We don't target you with it. We don't sell it. We hold no copy of it. There is nothing for us to hold.
No account, no analytics, no advertising, no crash reporting service and no third-party software kits of any kind — and no Motion Frequency server for anything to be sent to. The App Store handles the purchase; we never see your name, email address or payment details.
Every sound is generated on your iPhone while you listen. Nothing is streamed. The app doesn't use the microphone and never listens to you.
Some rooms answer the phone being tilted or shaken. Those readings move the picture moment to moment and are never stored or transmitted.
A recording goes to your photo library, in an album called Motion Frequency. The app keeps no copy, and it doesn't look at, read or analyse any of your other photos.
The room and sound settings you choose to save, so each room opens the way you left it. That's the complete list, and deleting the app removes it.
No analytics, no ads, no crash reporting, no third-party SDKs. It never needed the internet, so it works just the same on a plane.
It's bought once from the App Store. We never see your payment details, and refunds are Apple's to give, at reportaproblem.apple.com — you don't have to ask us.
The whole policy is short, and it's at polson.app/motionfrequency/privacy.
Twenty-four rooms, eight built-in sounds to start from, six short illustrated Learn pages, recording and a sleep timer — for one payment of £2.99. Nothing to subscribe to, nothing to buy inside it.
Real screens, not mock-ups.
One price for every room and every sound. There are no in-app purchases, so there's no better version waiting behind a second payment.
No packs, no premium rooms, no unlocks. What you pay for on the App Store is the whole app.
An iPhone running iOS 17 or later. Nothing else — no account, no internet connection, no special hardware.
Motion Frequency asks for one payment and then leaves you alone.
Price shown in GBP. The App Store sets its own price in each territory, so yours may differ — Apple shows it in your currency before you pay.
Before you start. The rooms flash, spin and change direction quickly, in strong colour and hard contrast. If you have epilepsy or have had a seizure, talk to your doctor before using the app; it shows a photosensitivity warning every time it opens. Motion Frequency is for relaxation and enjoyment, and is not a medical device. The full safety notes are in the terms.