Settled – The Wellness App

Settled is an Android app. Actually, it's four apps in one — or rather, the functionality of four useful lifestyle apps combined.

Mindful Ping

The idea of Mindful Ping came to me in January 2025, while I was struggling with stress and low energy. I believed that the fastest “cure” in my case would be to practice mindfulness — something that’s easy to decide on, but for me, completely impossible to achieve by myself.

So I looked for an app. I found none that actually worked. I tried to “vibe code” a simple Android app called Mindful Ping with Cursor, but the vibed code didn’t work at all. So I put it on my long-term to-do list.

When I made Settled, it felt natural to include this feature. Ironically, the simplest feature in the app became the most useful — for me.

Mindful Ping helps you stay aware of yourself and your state throughout the day.

It creates a notification every hour and asks you how you feel. In a stressful life, it’s a way to ground yourself and stay mindful during your day.

You can, of course, choose whatever ping interval you prefer, and you can align it with the clock. For me, that means it notifies me each whole hour.

Note that this works best if you have a smartwatch that shows your phone’s notifications, so you don’t have to pick up and unlock your phone all the time — something that’s likely to cause more irritation than calm.

Sonic Relaxation

In 2025, I started using TikTok consciously to de-stress. I trained the algorithm to show me clips that I found interesting and calming (instead of enraging). Some of the new clips that found me after this change were videos that just played a frequency or simple sound — often targeted to ADD/ADHD users to help calm the mind.

Most of them had little or no effect on me, but some did. So I wanted an app that presented a few sounds I could use whenever I felt like it.

I also used an app that played white and pink noise now and then. It was a bit annoying because it constantly nagged me about money for such a simple feature.

When I planned Settled, I decided to meet all my own expectations about sounds, frequencies, and noises.

Breathwork

“Breathwork” is a fancy word for conscious breathing. There are coaches who help people (especially wealthy managers and CEOs) breathe in ways that alter the mind.

I’m not wealthy, but after a burnout in 2022, I read “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art” by James Nestor. It was convincing. After that, I have practiced various techniques of breathwork — especially when I’m stressed out.

My smartwatch measures stress, and after just a few minutes of box breathing, my stress level usually drops back into the safe zone.

The app includes a number of popular breathwork exercises you’d expect to find in a breathwork app.

Meditation

I have practiced meditation since around 2014 and have read a number of books on the subject. I felt I was pretty good at it — until a severe traumatic experience in 2015 destroyed my ability to relax deeply.

I continued to meditate, of course, but it felt different. I could still observe myself and my thoughts, distance myself from physical and mental pain, and practice mindfulness. But often when I meditated, my smartwatch revealed that I was more stressed than my baseline.

That led me to want to learn more about meditation and to experiment with both very simple and more advanced forms. Along this path, I’ve read more books, tried the Gateway Experience tapes, and experimented with meditation and techniques from self-hypnosis.

The meditations in the app reflect this — and as I learn more, I’ll continue to add new meditations to the app’s playlists.

Ethics

I must admit that I have more than small concerns for our shared future. Sometimes it feels like everything today is motivated by raw, unhinged greed.

Take, for example, banks. They want to get rid of cash. Why? Well, it gives them a cut of every transaction we make. When we pay with cash, the banks get no cut. The entire amount goes from us to whomever we pay. If we pay with an app or a card, the app and card owner and the bank both get a fee (and valuable data to sell). Sometimes we pay the transaction fee. Sometimes the merchant pays.

At the same time, with electronic payments, the banks need fewer offices and fewer employees. So they get to make more money (more actual revenue because of per-transaction fees) and spend less — fewer offices and employees.

The local water company I use (a monopoly) pumps air into the water pipes. That creates higher consumption at my water meter — so I pay more money for worse quality. These are just examples of greed. Greed that eventually leads us to “digital IDs” and “Age Verification” just to use some websites on the internet. The stated motives are never the real motives. In our time, greed is always the real motive.

We have endless wars and several ongoing genocides because it’s profitable. We have treatments instead of cures for illnesses because it’s profitable. Google is tightening control over the use of open and free Android apps because it’s profitable.

So much greed. It’s depressing to be aware of it. It’s a curse to see the world as it is.

So, this app, Settled, has no dark patterns. No collection of data that can be monetized. No telemetry or analytics. It adheres to my ethical standards — which are strictly no greed. It’s not made by a big corporation with shareholders to feed.

The app is ad-free, and it does not track you. You can use it safely.