About this app

Heartful is a radically new and experimental app. We know it needs development but you can help us by trying it out and giving us constructive feedback. You will be contributing to research and helping us to develop apps that reduce stress and anxiety and make for a happier and more connected world! (See also Heart Bond our groundbreaking heart-to-heart connection app)

Heartful is the first app of its kind that allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your meditation and reduce stress by measuring and analysing your heart rate patterns. It uses the camera on your phone to measure your heart rate and displays how this changes with time during a meditation session. It also calculates a Heartfulness score to let you know how well you are mediating in real time.

Heartful is a bit like Mindfulness but focuses on the heart rather than the head or mind. It has its origins in what is called loving kindness meditation which seeks to feel love, appreciation and gratitude towards oneself, another person, a pet or animal or generally for all of nature, the earth or the universe.

Research has shown that our heart rates change in distinct patterns when we experience love, friendship or positive emotions and this is what Heartful measures and displays. Coaching narrations included with the app will help you learn how to meditate heartfully. Use the app daily as part of your meditation or spiritual practice and you will see how you scores soon increase. Research has shown that heartfulness is associated with lower levels of stress and greater feelings of wellbeing.

Please note that Heartful is not a medical device and that the heart rate information provided by the app must not be used for any form of medical diagnosis. If you have any concerns about your heart health please contact a suitably qualified medical professional.

Heartful Features:
- Free app without adverts
- Monitors heart rate patterns in real time to help you meditate better and to discover feelings of calm and peace.
- Connects you to your true, natural self and allows you to connect better with others.
- Helps reduce stress and increases feelings of wellbeing
- Analyses and displays heart rate variability patterns.
- Includes coaching narration to teach you how to use app.
- Includes range of music tracks that can be chosen for a meditation session.
- Includes range of background images for meditation display.
- Option to allow phone to vibrate to match Heartfulness scores.
- All sessions are saved for later viewing.
- Data saved to a folder on the phone which can be downloaded later for research purposes.

New features

Bug Fixes

App Permissions

Allows applications to access information about networks.
Required to be able to access the camera device.
Allows using PowerManager WakeLocks to keep processor from sleeping or screen from dimming.
Allows applications to open network sockets.
Allows an application to write to external storage.
Allows an application to read from external storage.
Allows access to the vibrator.
Allows an app to access approximate location.