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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

Hey HN! Some more info: I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pi-A (https://www.pi-a.io) which developed Lungy (https://www.lungy.app). Lungy is an app (iOS only for now) that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging and beneficial to do. It hopefully has many aspects of interest to the HN community – real-time fluid, cloth and soft body sims running on the phone’s GPU. My background is as a junior surgical trainee and I started building Lungy in 2020 during the first COVID lockdown in London. During COVID, there were…

Lungy is an iOS app that guides breathing exercises through real-time responsive animations. Developed by an NHS doctor, it uses GPU-accelerated simulations of fluid, cloth, and soft body physics to make breathing… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Hey HN! I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pia (https://www.piahealth.co) which developed Lungy (https://www.lungy.app). Lungy is an iOS app that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging and beneficial to do. It’s been two years since Lungy launched (here’s the original ShowHN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34534615) and it's had a huge update and complete redesign. We rebuilt the whole app, and added a real-time 3D soft body solver which gives some really cool interactions like blobs /…

    2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2
    Lungy▲92

    Next-gen breathing exercises that respond to every breath

    2022 · lungy.app · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    Lungy▲117

    Next-gen iOS app that responds as you breathe

    2023 · lungy.app · its alternatives →

  4. 4
    Lungy▲162

    Spatial computing app for stress & relaxation

    2024 · lungy.app · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    A bit more context - the cloth sim is part of my app, Lungy (https://www.lungy.app). It's designed to be an active meditation / relaxation app, so you can play relaxing instruments in space and immersive breathing exercises. The original Lungy is a breathing app available for iOS, that uses real-time breathing with interactive visuals. The cloth sim is a Verlet integration, running on a regular grid. For now, I have tried a couple of different cloth scenes - a sort of touch reactive 'pad', where different parts of the cloth are mapped to different sounds and a cloth that blows…

    2024 · youtube.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Download Lungy: Breathing & Anxiety by Pi-A on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Lungy: Breathing & Anxiety.

    2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    Boxy▲69

    Breath to relieve stress

    2022 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    Breathly▲110

    Open-source breath training and relaxation app

    2021 · breathly.app · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Stress relief is just a tap away!

    2018 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Hi everyone, I am Felix, a famliy doctor from ZH, Switzerland. A couple of month ago I started this little project called shii • haa, a breathing app that uses the phone`s microphone for live biofeedback My prior work in emergency medicine and intensive care was closesly linked to breathing, mostly in critical situations... and let me to reevaluate my own way of breathing. over time one question popped into my mind: can medical knowledge and biofeedback make an app actually promote self-awareness instead of attaching your goals to the award system of the app. it combines signal processing, a…

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    Squair▲162

    I built Squair because my phone was giving me anxiety - and it was also the only thing in my pocket when anxiety hit. The problem: 4 cups of coffee just to focus. Then the anxiety kicks in. Chest tight. Racing thoughts. Scrolling reels to "calm down" made it worse. I Googled "anxiety relief" at 2am and found box breathing — same technique Navy SEALs use in combat. First time I tried it, I felt the difference within 2 minutes. No crash. No pills. Just breathing. So I built an app around it. 6 months. Solo dev with a full-time job. 112 builds. 2 App Store rejections. Finally live. What it…

    Jan 2026 · squair.app · its alternatives →

  12. 12
    Calmer▲379

    An anxiety relief app that actually works

    2025 · gocalmer.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    I built a terminal app that paces slow breathing at 6 breaths per minute for vagal tone training. It's a single Python file, stdlib only, no dependencies — just run breathe and follow the bar. I'm a cardiology patient (HFrEF). Slow breathing at resonance frequency is one of the few non-pharmacological interventions shown to improve cardiac vagal tone and baroreflex sensitivity (Bernardi et al., Circulation 2002; Lancet 1998). I wanted a frictionless daily habit tool — no app store, no account, no subscription, just open terminal and go. Design constraints, all grounded in the clinical…

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Breathing exercises for everyone

    2021 · breathin.app · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    A distraction-free breathing app for labor preparation

    Jul 2026 · lebene.pl · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    💪 Helm is an app that gamifies stress/anxiety/depression management in an actionable manner to provide relief. - chuabingquan/helm

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Self therapy, improve your emotional wellbeing

    2022 · 6cdew.app.link · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Breathing app made by teenager developer

    2019 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19
    Rootd▲127

    Anxiety and panic attack relief for iOS & Android

    2019 · rootd.io · its alternatives →

  20. 20
    Breathhh▲204

    Personal mental shield against stress and anxiety

    2022 · breathhh.app · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Easy CPR training & simulation using only an iPhone

    Nov 2025 · forres.tech · its alternatives →

  22. 22
    Sigh▲76

    Reduce overall stress in 5 minutes with cyclic breathing

    2023 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    A virtual tool to help with breathing exercises and anxiety.

    2020 · breathemachine.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24
    Becalm▲68

    The app that helps you relax

    2020 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

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