Content is amazing, app is lacking I absolutely LOVE the Calm app. I recommend it to everyone in know and have even purchased gift subscriptions for three of my friends. The content it provides has truly been life changing for me. My problem lies with the app itself and its features, or lack thereof. A few key improvements could go a long way towards a smoother experience. Please figure out a way in which we can organize our favorites. I have so many that I want to refer back to. If I could separate them into categories such as focus, anxiety, etc. that would be a huge help. Perhaps a way to add a note to a particular meditation would be immensely helpful! What was that I liked about this one? Oh yeah, it’s on the topic of x, y or z. Yes, there are titles to the meditations but they don’t always fit and the descriptions are cut off so you can’t always tell from that. I spend so much time, clicking, listening a little then having to restart because it was the one I was looking for. Frustrating. There is a section for “Collections” but nothing ever gets put there even when I heart it and I can find zero information about it in the help and support section.
I use this app for the sleep stories but i haven’t been using it lately because of one major flaw: they’re only around 30 minutes long with no option to create a playlist! If we’re using it for sleep then obviously the user has trouble falling asleep and how likely is it that you’re going to fall asleep within 30 minutes?! I’m starting to get anxious using this app because if a sleep story end then I know that 30 minutes has passed and I’m still not asleep. Then I have to go on my phone again and turn on another one. If I don’t fall asleep by the end of that one then that means that it’s been an hour of trying to sleep with no success. And on and on…I also get anxious because then it feel like a countdown (kind of like how if you really need sleep and you can’t you’re counting down how many hours of sleep you’ll get if you fall asleep now, but with every passing hour you get more and more anxious that you’ll be getting less and less sleep). I renewed my subscription for another year but I won’t renew again unless they fix this.
I don’t know what I would do without this app. After years of working night shift, I need all the help I can get with sleep, and this app has been essential to my sleep hygiene. I preferred the old view/functionality (now it’s harder to see my favorites and they fall off my list after a while,) but it’s doable.
Update: I am so frustrated with the changes they’ve made with this app, particularly because it seems designed to encourage just the right amount of insomnia to keep you needing it. For example, now when I wake up in the middle of the night and I open the app, hoping to limit my exposure to the phone and go back to sleep, I get a pop up asking me to rate the app. I have also found over time that I’m doing a lot of toggling between different areas of the app to get where I want to be. This is counterproductive for sleep, but very effective if the goal is to increase interaction with the app. Needs a lot of work.
I started Calm when I had just moved to Texas RIGHT BEFORE CO VID so that was JAST GREAAT (I was like 7 i think)
I was really depressed and anxious about everything too the point that my parents got me a therapist (she still ma bestie now)
I digress
So I got calm bc I was literally sleepwalking
(which is a sign of stress and anxiety) but then I got calm and it really helped me out!
We ended up moving back to where we lived before. It was pretty stressful but I was
Able to get through it better because number one I wasn’t in the middle freaking COVID-19 and calm was there for me
I really recommend this app because it got me through some of the most important parts of my life. I still use it today and it’s always part my schedule.
Thank you so much for reading this whole review. I really appreciate you and you have a good day. 👏🫶
Honestly this app is great, it’s helped me go to sleep a lot earlier and stay asleep throughout the night. My issue with this app however, is that everything is locked. There are a few soundscapes and such that non premium members can listen to but overall they aren’t the best. I understand that the company has to make money somehow, but I think it’s unfair to the people not able or willing to pay $70 a year that they get almost nothing. It’s frustrating when there is a story or a meditation I'm really interested in and I can’t even listen to a little bit of it because it’s only for premium members. Not to mention that non paying members don’t even get 30% access to the all of the things in the sleep category, I went and looked through everything and honestly it was more disappointing then I thought it would be.
This app has been life-changing. I started using it a year ago. It has inspired a journey exploring my self-worth and addiction to perfection, which in turn inspired me to pursue happiness and gratitude. The master classes are my absolute favorite. Tamara Levitt’s class on gratitude and Shawn Achor’s on happiness are ones I listen to each week. I have made huge changes in my life because of what I have learned this year. I am truly happier than I have ever been because I have learned that my perspective determines 90% of my happiness. I am so grateful that Calm and California Teacher’s Association have partnered together to make this free to educators. It is a huge blessing in my life that ripples out to others.
Airplay will not open - Memory mgmt problems? I become frustrated every single day with this poorly built app….just as I’m launching it on my recent iPad to help me go to sleep. I cast my audio apps to speakers using Airplay. Spotify, Pandora, etc. work flawlessly. Not Calm. Most times Airplay will not open (the icon does not appear in upper right corner). The only work around I have found is to close all apps running in the background, including Calm and then re-open Calm by itself. Sometimes even this does not work. It annoys me enough that I will not renew my Calm Premium subscription if it is not fixed. There is plenty of content available elsewhere.
Love it so much!!! Have used it for years and I really appreciate that it doesn’t do sterilization practices of mindfulness. It has so many teachers from Buddhist/Indic/Asian backgrounds as well as academics… my biggest complaint with Headspace (which I also used for years) was how much money Headspace was making while the monasteries that have kept such practices alive for thousands of years really struggled during the pandemic and it fell upon Asian practitioners to support those places while Headspace did not provide support or highlight peoples from such background.. which is appropriation.
It makes me happy and I get better sleep from calm. ☺️ One thing I’d like to add is more princess stories with more realistic voice acting. Orr, you could add funny stories 😊👩💻 I am spending my amazing night writing this because calm always asks me for a review ButtttT it’s worth it because now YoU know how much I use this supercalifragilisticexpialidocious APP GAME for listening to AMAZING STORIES!! —the most amazing, most awesome, most beautiful and strong and smart, most loveable and coolest person ever, ME 👩🎤 jokes on you , I’m not telling you my real name tehee
Sharing Feature is Ruining My SleepJanetLeeBrownon2024-05-27 I don’t want to share any of my results with the public, and until this past week I didn’t have to. I can no longer listen to the music tracks, which are so tremendously helpful for sleep, without being asked to share my mindfulness streak. Track, share, track, share, track, share, ad infinitum. I thought if I shared it to myself, then I would get back the uninterrupted stream of music, but that did not work.
Please make the sharing feature go away, or give me a way to opt out. What was helping me sleep is now ruining my sleep.
Thank you,
Disgruntled User