I'm a doctor and built a responsive breathing app for anxiety and sleep
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 /…
I'm a doctor and built a responsive breathing app for anxiety and sleep launched on June 22, 2025 with 103 votes, #419 of 7,999 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
Lungy is an iOS app designed to help with anxiety and sleep through interactive breathing exercises that respond to user breathing in real-time. Built by an NHS doctor, the app uses a 3D soft body solver to create engaging visual feedback, with objects that inflate as the user breathes. A Vision Pro version called Lungy Spaces is also available. The app was redesigned and rebuilt from its original 2023 launch, offering a more engaging approach to guided breathing practices.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
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.
I love the visual feedback, the simplicity, and the overall soothing vibe of the app. The visual feedback is especially helpful for people w ADHD to help them stay focused. I also like the one time purchase option. Things that could be improved: you can’t start an exercise from the favorites list. When creating a custom exercise, selecting the different sounds should cause it to play those sounds so you know what you’re choosing. There should be a way to provide feedback to the developer within the app.Also, I find the organization of the app confusing. There’s so much overlap between the first two sections. Hey Julie, Thanks so much for your review - really glad you find Lungy helpful. The…from apps.apple.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
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…
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I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety2023 · lungy.app · ▲666Hey 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…
I built an interactive cloth solver for Apple Vision Pro2024 · youtube.com · ▲99A 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…
I'm a doctor and made a breathing app for stress and anxiety- Lungy 2.02024 · apps.apple.com · ▲6Download Lungy: Breathing & Anxiety by Pi-A on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like Lungy: Breathing & Anxiety.
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