Smiling Mind: Mental Wellbeing reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
A free meditation app from an Australian non-profit that users loved for years for its simplicity and accessibility — but a recent "mental fitness" redesign split the base: the content is still praised while the new interface, lost progress, and login failures drive people away.
What users love
Genuinely free from a non-profit — no paywalls, no ads
The single biggest reason people love it: all content is open with no subscription and no ads, just an occasional gentle donation prompt. Against Calm and Headspace locking everything behind a paywall, it feels like a rare honest gesture.
It's actually free. You have access to all the content without having to pay for a subscription. They only ask for donations once in a blue moon, and there's no pressure to send them money.
I just discovered this app and I'm genuinely impressed, content is very good and no hidden paywalls.
It’s a registered non-profit, so the focus is on impact rather than upsells
Quality of the guided sessions and a pleasant voice keep people loyal
Almost no one faults the content itself: the meditations are well-planned, easy to follow, with a good talk-to-silence ratio, and the guide's voice is calm and not patronizing. Many have used it for years and rate it above paid rivals.
The guide voice is pleasant and not patronizing. I find that the practices have a good ratio of talking to silence, and the comments are helpful rather than distracting.
I find the guided meditations are planned super well, easy to follow and teach you lots of new meditation techniques.
The instructions are brilliant and a nice calming voice that doesn't irritate.
Genuinely helps with anxiety, sleep, and focus — say long-term users
Those who stay describe concrete results: it calms the nervous system, helps them fall asleep and get back to sleep after waking, and brings focus. Many were sent by psychologists and doctors, and it becomes a daily ritual for years.
My go-to app when I need help falling asleep. During the multiple years I have been using it, there is only one single time I didn't fall asleep. 10/10 lifesaver app, truly.
I struggle with anxiety and depression and this app is helping me so much to calm myself down.
This app was highly recommended by my psychologist to help with anxiety, stress and sleeping.
What users hate
The redesign buried what people loved: everything got chaotic and hard to find
After the update navigation fell apart: favorite meditations are buried under layers of menus and "courses", search is illogical, and the layout is cluttered. Long-time users say an app meant to calm them now causes anxiety.
I just want to find meditation recordings and they're buried under menus for various "courses". Now I need to meditate and I have to spend 15 minutes trying to find a useful session.
The new update makes it very difficult and confusing to navigate. My whole family struggles to find what we're looking for.
Previous version was great, new update is difficult to find the meditations
Playback randomly cuts out mid-session
Meditations stop at random mid-way, often right at the five-minute mark, and to resume you have to back out and find your spot again. It hits sleep users hardest: instead of relaxing, you get dead silence and frustration.
Recordings will randomly cut out and you need to exit out of the recording, go back into it, and navigate to the spot you were up to to resume.
they only play for around 5 minutes until it randomly cuts off dead silent. Always at 5 mins with no explanation
New update keeps stopping playback Can't get more than 3 mins into a meditation which is annoying.
Can't log in or register: login bounces back with an "undefined error"
The update logged people out and they can't get back in: login loops to the same page or throws an "undefined error", and password resets don't fire. For people who need the app right now to fall asleep, it's especially painful.
the new update force logged me out and now I'm just getting an undefined login error. Really helpful when I'm trying to meditate during a stressful time
it will no longer log me in and just keeps returning me to the login page no matter what I try.
Tried to reset password but just sat there when I tapped the reset link. does this thing actually work?
The update wiped progress, favorites, and beloved meditations
The move to the new version reset years of progress and favorites lists, and some old meditations simply vanished or were renamed. It's hardest on families with neurodivergent kids whose bedtime routines depended on those sessions.
when they updated this app they made it much more buggy, more difficult to navigate, and removed all of my past progress.
The latest update has removed all of the meditations that worked for her over these years
Plus months of progress and curating are gone!
Won't load and hangs on an endless loading screen
Since the relaunch the app often won't open at all: an infinite spinner, "an error has occurred", outright crashes. Restarting, clearing cache, and reinstalling don't help — sometimes it fails to load for weeks.
great app when it works. but crashes/doesn't load ~50% of the time.
it constantly won't load, even after restarting the app, clearing the cache etc.
New update is terrible! It completely won't even open now. Spinning circle of infinite waiting.
Forced sign-up and a quiz before you can even see the app
Just to try it you now must create an account, hand over your email, and complete an unskippable smiley-face quiz. For people who opened the app while stressed, those hoops are reason enough to delete it and move to a rival that asks for none of it.
Why am I forced to create an account? The app is not free if you're collecting my data.
Instantly wants an email before I even get to see it's value proposition, then a time wasting quiz that you can't skip.
Forcing me to sign up and anwser a bunch of questions I am not inerested to answer before I even can look what this app is like.
Default-on background music that drags on after the session ends
The new default background music distracts many, and after a meditation ends it keeps playing with no closing bell — so you wait or reach for the phone, breaking the relaxed state. It's especially disruptive to sleep sessions.
now they've added this itritating background music to it and completely ruined it. Instead of getting a calming guide to sleep....I'm annoyed, anxious and wide awake.
I really dislike the relatively new feature where the music keeps on going after the meditation has ended.
default-on background music is distracting
Downloaded meditations disappear and offline mode is hit-or-miss
The download button often doesn't work and no longer shows whether a file finished, and already-downloaded meditations get deleted without warning. So offline sessions break the moment Wi-Fi drops — the very thing offline mode is for.
I use offline mode and my downloaded meditations get deleted without warning and for no reason.
the download button doesn't seem to work, and you don't have the option to download sessions whilst you're browsing, which the previous app did.
Now the download symbol lights up when I press it but doesn't actually say if I've downloaded it fully, which makes offline meditations stop midway sometimes when I turn off the wifi.
Female-voice preference is ignored — all kids' meditations are male
Despite setting a female-voice preference, meditations play in a male voice and the promised toggle isn't there. It especially upsets parents whose kids fell asleep to a specific female-voiced session for years and now can't get it back.
Despite me putting female voice as preference, all meditations in the routine tab is male voice. I checked the Q&A, it says toggle with the music icon, but it doesn't have the option, it only has options on background music. Very frustrating.
disappointed there's the option for a female voice when most are still male
My daughter LOVES the meditations and would listen to Golden Glow with the female voice every night for bed. Now it's only the man's voice for all the kids meditations.