Best Meditation Apps for Mindfulness of 2024 (We Tried Them All)

Meditation is a technique dating back hundreds of years and focuses on integrating mind and body to calm the mind. Meditation and mindfulness also help enhance our body’s overall well-being, improve mental focus, and help us become better aware of our surroundings without judgment.

According to a 2017 survey, the number of adults practicing mantra-based, spiritual, or mindfulness meditation has tripled since 2012. Today, with more technology, we can access meditation apps for mindfulness, including our top 10 recommendations:

Headspace

Headspace offers more than 500 10-minute guided meditations and sessions to reduce stress, improve sleep, and more. Headspace provides an extensive collection of diverse videos encompassing guided meditations, breathing exercises, and podcasts. The platform allows individuals to choose the duration of their meditation videos.

Headspace assists people in reducing stress, achieving restful sleep, cultivating healthy habits, and enhancing overall well-being. You can sign up for Headspace for $12.95 per month.

Omvana

Omvana offers users a mix of guided meditations set to ambient music and features to create custom-tailored sessions. With Omvana, you can blend narration (speeches, meditation guides, etc.) with ambient sounds, meditation tracks, relaxation tunes, and binaural beats, crafting your personalized and unique meditation experience.

Omvana features more than 1,000 meditation options for a monthly subscription price of $0.99 to $7.99. Additionally, the app offers track recommendations based on the user’s current state through integration with HealthKit. Users can seamlessly expand their library by purchasing additional tracks from the Omvana store to enrich their collections.

Calm

If you are looking for “daily calm” meditations, Calm has everything you need, including more than 500 guided meditations, sleep stories, and multi-day programs. Calm offers a wide variety of content, offering users customized programming suggestions when signing up for the premium subscription plan.

Minimal investment is needed to access high-quality meditation lessons using your computer or mobile device. Calm is available for a monthly subscription of $12.99, which provides access to their library, and the company is continually adding new items to the library.

Simple Habit

With more than 2,000 guided meditation options, Simple Habit offers five-minute meditations perfect for experiencing tranquility while on the go. Simple Habit helps make routine meditation a part of your daily life, which can help provide you with a happier, healthier life. Regular meditation through Simple Habit helps improve your life, marriage, family life, work, sleep, and health.

Do not become overwhelmed with stress; let Simple Habit help get you focused and on track with routine meditation sessions. Simple Habit is available for an $11.99 monthly subscription fee.

Buddhify

Buddhify features over 80 meditation track options designed to help with work efficiency, sleep quality, and focus on daily tasks. Using Buddhify allows you to customize your meditation plan using the app’s unique library, organized on a colored wheel, with each wedge representing a meditation topic.

Features available in the Buddhify app include saving your favorite meditations and customizing your wheel to feature your top choices. They can be used while traveling, walking, or on a work break. Buddhify offers different options ranging between $2.99 and $4.99 each.

Insight Timer

Insight Timer prides itself on providing users with the world’s most extensive free guided meditations. This app features more than 130,000 recommended meditation options, perfect for those wanting quality meditation and mindfulness activities without signing up for a monthly subscription plan.

Insight Timer is one of the best apps for tracking and improving meditation sessions to help with stress, anxiety, and sleep habits. The app provides mindfulness and breathwork exercises, guided visualizations, multi-day courses, soothing music tracks, and bedtime stories. Ultimately, this app helps provide a timer for your meditation sessions no matter where you are and helps provide you with an interval timer bell sound, an ending timer bell sound, and ambient background sound while meditating.

Smiling Mind

Psychologists and educators worked together to create a not-for-profit app to help promote mindfulness through access to more than 300 meditation routines. Smiling Minds is free and offers everything needed to improve mindfulness and inner peace.

Some of the many benefits of using the Smiling Minds app for meditating include accessing exercises perfect for all ages. These exercises focus on mindfulness, and it’s entirely free. This app is ideal for beginners looking to see if they want to continue meditating and, if desired, help create the habits to continue with routine meditation practices. Many users have reported increased gratefulness and an improved mood after using the Smiling Minds app.

The Mindfulness App

With more than 400 guided meditations and helpful tracking tools, The Mindfulness App features everything needed to meditate and stay on track with mindful reminders. The app has more than 20 topics, making it possible to offer personalized recommendations for meditation lessons. The Mindfulness App is perfect for beginners, offering a beginner course to help those new to meditation establish a routine.

Though many of the app's features are available online, The Mindfulness App has many features available when there is no WiFi or internet connection. The Mindfulness App is available for a $9.99 monthly subscription fee.

Healthy Minds Program

The Healthy Minds Program uses scientifically-backed programs for developing practical, beneficial, and sustainable wellness skills. With hundreds of guided meditation options available, the Healthy Minds Program is free to use.

The Healthy Minds Program features a straightforward interface with short, podcast-style lessons, making it possible to meditate and use the app wherever you are, no matter how much time you have. This app is an excellent introduction to meditation and can help more advanced users through its extensive library.

Breathe

Breathe is the perfect app to help with anxiety, sleep, stress, and busy schedules. With more than 1,700 meditation options, including shorter meditation sessions, Breathe is ideal for busy people. Breathe offers many programs and options, including meditation lessons for beginners. The peaceful narrators lead many of the app’s guided meditations and sleep stories to help aid in your relaxation and focus.

Breathe is like having a spa in app form, where you can navigate through the app’s visually calming design and audio that sounds like a spa on your phone. Breathe is only $12.99 monthly and features everything needed to improve your overall mental wellness and health.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is meditation?

Meditation is a practice that has been used for hundreds of years as a way to reduce stress, relax, and help with overall health and well-being. What was first used as a spiritual and religious practice of Buddhism and Hinduism has now been used by millions of people to improve their breathing, awareness, and attention.

What is the best way to start meditating?

One of the best ways to meditate is to download a meditation and mindfulness app. Many apps, including those listed above, are designed for beginners, providing an explicit curriculum to help build up meditation habits.

If you are unsure if meditation is something you will continue, several free apps are available. Then, once you get into the habit of regular meditation practices, you can upgrade to a paid app to help expand and enhance your meditation sessions.

How do most meditation apps work?

Each of the above-listed meditation apps works differently based on what you are looking for, but all offer multiple guided meditation options to help provide you with more discipline. Most of the meditation apps focus on mindfulness through meditation in the comfort of your own home, on your schedule, without having to pay for expensive classes or gym memberships.

You can choose how many lessons you want to complete each day and what you want to focus on. Several apps have questionnaires when you sign up to help give you a customized meditation plan.

Are there any benefits to using a meditation app?

Medication apps provide affordable access to guided meditation sessions without paying for expensive gym memberships or classes. Additionally, routine meditation offers overall health benefits, and using a meditation app helps keep you focused and enables you to stay in the habit of regular meditation. You can meditate anywhere with your computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Will it be worth using a meditation app?

Many people find using meditation apps worth the time and cost as they discover these tools help make meditation a regular part of their lives. You will benefit from the features available with these apps because you can customize your meditation sessions by using an app.

Are meditation apps effective?

Research has shown many benefits to using meditation apps, and those who stick with them will find them very effective. Though many people blame their smartphones for the stress and anxiety in their lives, they can turn this tool into a way to eliminate the stress and anxiety from their lives.

Are there any limitations to meditation and mindfulness apps?

As with any technology, meditation and mindfulness apps have some limitations. However, these apps are very versatile, offering many features and options. The only restriction is that certain apps may not have all the features to meet your needs or to fit your learning style and preferences. Some people have also claimed that meditation and mindfulness apps sometimes seem passive, vague, or repetitive.

Can a meditation app help me with anxiety?

Meditation can help with anxiety, and routine meditation through the aid of an app can help reduce anxiety long-term. The best thing about using apps to help reduce stress is that you do not need more than five minutes daily to see results. Some experts claim that one minute of meditation a day is enough to effectively reduce anxiety.

Why are meditation apps popular?

Meditation apps help with everything from reducing anxiety to relieving stress, improving concentration, and enhancing your energy. Because of this, more than 52 million users turn to their meditation apps to help with overall mental health and physical wellness.

If you want to improve your meditation habits or are just starting and learning about meditation, downloading a meditation app can help. Take advantage of the many benefits and features of the above-listed meditation and mindfulness apps, which are designed to help improve your mind and body's overall health, mindfulness and wellness.

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