Insight Timer: Meditate, Sleep reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
A vast free library of meditations, music and timers for people who want quiet — but an app that used to be minimalist now force-marches you through onboarding, goals and streaks.
What users love
A huge free library for any mood and any moment
Thousands of meditations, talks, music, breathwork and yoga from world-class teachers — much of it free. There's always something to match your mood, the time of day and the exact need.
Amazing app. Wide take of collection of meditation, deep breathing, guided meditations, sleep help! It's the only meditation app you need.
so many options, always something available to meet my mood, need or time of day.
Hands down the best meditation app out there! I have never paid for premium as the free version still allows access to daily quotes, setting daily intentions, mood check-ins and reflections as well as a massive catalog of guided meditations
A simple, customizable timer with gongs — the reason many stay
Many came just for the self-guided timer: custom durations, start/end gongs, interval bells every few minutes, none of Android's irritating default drones. Perfect for yoga, stretching and silent practice.
I love the timer - none of the irritating drones from the default Android app.
It does perfectly what it says on the tin. I use the timer every day to do Sun Salutation, Asana Flow, Pranayama and Shavasana in a 40 minute practice.
I've been using this app just for the timer and it's great. I'm so glad I have something that makes meditation a dopaminergic habit.
Genuinely helps with sleep, anxiety and building the habit
For many it's a daily anchor over years: it helps them fall asleep, manage anxiety and insomnia, and build a lasting practice. People recommend it to therapists, friends and patients and say it changed their lives.
I love this app, recommended by my therapist almost 2 yrs ago. Immediate help at my fingertips!
it has been my partner through thousands of meditation sessions for over a decade. it's simplistic design matched with content from world renowned teachers in meditation and mindfullnes is unmatched.
Such a fantastic app that offers so much mindfulness and guided meditation which has supported me to feel less anxious, believe in myself and all round have a positive impact on my life
What users hate
Mandatory onboarding on every open with no way to skip
Skip the app for a couple of weeks and it force-marches you through an intake survey about goals and interests — no skip button, no working back button. Often the only way out is to fully close the app.
extremely annoying that when I go back into the app if I haven't used it in a while, I have to press so many buttons and can't skip the intake survey. I want to simply click on a meditation, or use the timer. all of the added fluff is simply added distraction.
I am really tired of the forced walk thrus of new features every time I login.
It seems like after the latest update, it brings me to a page where I have to enter goals and interests even though I have used the app for over a decade. There's no way to get around it.
Forced streaks and «I'm committed» you can't turn off
After every session you must tap «I'm committed» and pledge a daily streak — no X, no «no thanks». The Duolingo-style gamification grates on people who came for peace, not pressure.
Please remove the "I'm committed" option that I'm forced to tap after each meditation. It feels invasive and currently I'm closing the app reach time, because there's no other way to close that screen, no X and the back button doesn't work either. Forced meditation goes against its very purpose.
I used to love this app so much! but latest updates is trying to gamify meditation and relaxation, and it's ruining the whole interface! great content can be found on here, but please stop this Duolingo style "I'm committed!" silliness
Consent violation is an automatic 1 star in 2026. App now locks you out until you "commit to a goal".
A maze of screens before and after a session instead of «open, meditate, leave»
It takes 5-10 screens to reach the timer and as many again to close a session: «how do you feel», «your intention», «save», «tip the teacher». Slow lotus animations make it worse — people can't fit in a quick meditation between tasks.
Very frustrated with all these prompts, pop-ups, and community features. How are you feeling? What's your intention? Do you want to save the session? Do you want to tip the teacher? Do you want to commit to X days.
Honestly just so bloated. I don't want to have to go through 5 screens just to get to a meditation and then 5 more after completion.
why do I have to wait for an animation and press Continue and Finish about 6 times on different pages after I listen to something? it's the opposite of a well designed ux.
Relentless premium upselling drowns out the point of meditating
The moment a session ends, a pop-up pushes an upgrade; before it starts, an unasked-for free trial. The constant «buy premium» right when you've found calm reads as greed and disrespect.
"Greed"🤑 Should be the new name for this app. It's just plain rude and disrespectful that after every meditation with the timer you are confronted with a pop-up page up selling you asking you to upgrade.
Beautiful app. But ruins all meditative benefits by constantly hassling you for money after meditation
This app constantly spams you with messages to upgrade your account. The minute my meditation sessions is over, I'm getting spammed with messages asking me to download the widget, sign up for the paid version, enable notifications, add more features.
Core playback features moved behind the paywall
The free version can no longer seek, rewind, repeat a track or set intervals — all locked behind a subscription. Users see it as deliberately breaking the basics to squeeze money from the people who need it most.
The free version no longer allows the user to seek or skip back or forth in meditations. You cannot skip or rewind or fast forward on free version. Breaking core features to pressure users to pay is unnecessary for anything other than increasing profits at the cost of harming the most vulnerable and desperate populations relying on the service.
good app idea. alot of content to support sleeping and ad free when listening. Unfortunately cant put tracks on repeat locked behind a paywall. so ridiculously predatory on people that may need this for support.
if you want a session to have intervals, that is meditate for 10 minutes and then do another 10 minutes you need to pay 😞
Audio cuts out mid-session and mid-playlist at night
After recent updates, sleep and meditation audio randomly stops: rain cuts out in the night, playlists freeze after two hours, sessions auto-end early. For people who listen to fall asleep, it breaks the core use case.
Stops playing constantly! I downloaded this app and it looked pretty good, lots of options. One thing I didn't like was the talking in the beginning of many of the sleep audios. But the issue that made me delete the app was that on 3 of the 4 nights that I played a rainfall audio to help me sleep, it would stop playing out of nowhere.
Used to be a perfect minimalistic timer, but these days sometimes randomly quits my session midway through (e.g. 39 minutes into a 60 minute session) for no clear reason.
playlists freeze editing the # of stars because as of a few months ago, all of my playlists will freeze and stop playing. this is very disruptive because i use them to help me sleep.
Bookmarks, playlists and saved items vanish after updates
Successive updates wipe folders, bookmarks and playlists or bury them so deep they can't be found — forcing you to re-search every track. Years of curation just disappears, sometimes along with your streak after a sudden login prompt.
great content. i use it often for managing anxiety, insomnia, and meditation. got the subscription for years. Woke this morning to discover that they removed ALL of the playlist and bookmark features. The only way to find what I want is to "search" for each every time
The bookmarks page has been deleted. I can't find all the meditations I've bookmarked anymore.
Loved the app and was on nearly a year streak with lots of saved méditations. Until today when it asked me to login, which I don't think I had had to do before. Now all my streak and saved meditations are gone.
Constant UI reshuffling forces you to relearn it every time
The layout and home screen get overhauled almost monthly: buttons move, sections shuffle, handy new features get added then yanked. Every update means hunting for where everything went.
The UI and functionality changes constantly!
But can you guys please stop changing everything around so often? I keep opening the app after an update to find everything rearranged
Always takes me 10 minutes to find where they've moved things.
Trial billing: charges with no warning and no way to cancel
Trials silently flip to paid: the promised reminder email never arrives, an annual charge lands out of nowhere, and refunds are refused even for clearly accidental sign-ups. Some users find charges for a subscription they never agreed to.
Absolutely terrible app with a predatory pricing system. We accidentally installed the trial and it quickly charged us $90 for the entire year of subscription with very little in terms of warning. We then even submitted a request for refund noting that this was accidental, but they responded that they will not honour this.
I only agreed to the trial because it promised a reminder email after 5days so I would remember to cancel if I didn't like it. No reminder was received and now I have been charged
first of all it didn't notify me before ending the free trial. now with the update it doesn't remember i paid for a year subscription. this app is a scam.
Login and accounts break: «system error», lockouts, no sign-in
The app keeps demanding re-login, logs people out every couple of days, or greets them with a server error. After a reinstall the opening screen often has no «sign in» option at all — just a questionnaire that spawns a fresh empty account.
Awful application. There is a terrible issue that plagues this app where you get logged out after a few days and then when you try to login the app just says "system error". I tried contacting support twice and they refuse to answer
its been making me do the sign in process ever 2 days
keep getting server error whenever I try to sign in despite having registered and signed up for 1 year plan. its been days now same error. Will be canceling my subscription.
Streak mechanics punish missed days and can harm wellbeing
The streak can't be switched off, and losing it over one missed day feels like «failure» — sometimes driving people away entirely. For a meditation app, these retention-game mechanics work against the very idea of calm.
I deleted the app because I missed two days for family emergency and I didn't have any progress after almost getting to a year.
The daily counter that can't be switched off is my biggest annoyance though. I went through a period of only using this app for my daily meditations and got up to over 200 days and actually felt it was bad for my mental health so had to purposely not use it one day so the count would reset.
i also feel having a streak kind of system is counter intuitive you want people to be more relaxed not less cause they broke their needless streak