Breathe Zen

Breathe Zen is a simple approach to slow paced breathing, an easy way to improve your mental & physical health: reduce anxiety, cardiovascular risks, improve focus & sleep quality and boost your mood.

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Inspiration

I admire my cousin Chloé, she is a doctor at the hospital who helps elderly people towards the end of their lives. She introduced me to paced breathing and how it can help everybody improve their health. And it did help me. I am no doctor but I can build apps, so I made one that help with this practice. This is my way to pay it forward.

What it does

Simply tap "Start Breathing" and inhale/exhale following the bubble on screen. After your session, you are encouraged to keep it up. You have the chance to record how you felt before and after, so you get statistics that help you learn and track the impact on your health, encouraging you to continue. You can also change the breathing exercises and create your own. An added bonus is the ability to customize colors and animations used during the breathing sessions.

How I built it

I took my MacBook Pro on holiday with me and had people around me try it. I know they were too soft in their feedback, but I got valuable insights. The tech stack is:

  • Pure Swift
  • SwiftUI
  • Core Data I used native Apple technologies only, plus RevenueCat.

Challenges I ran into

  1. UI Design: I do appreciate beautiful things, but my design skills are only inspired by my Twitter feed and love for Apple products and software. I tend to clutter UIs too much because I naturally want to showcase what my apps can do. I try to think less like an engineer and more like an app builder.

  2. Swift Data, especially with relationships: Near the deadline, I decided to obliterate Swift Data completely and replace it with Core Data. I miss the integration with SwiftUI, but at least now it works.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud of actually shipping both the app and my first YouTube video! I also used this opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and gain new knowledge.

What I learned

In short, I learned:

  • Swift Data
  • Deeper SwiftUI (especially navigation)
  • Final Cut Pro
  • YouTube Studio
  • iOS 18 APIs

What's next for Breathe Zen

The first version has a lot of room for improvement but is already picking up some downloads. That means there is a chance to really help people and add a revenue stream. I will experiment and optimize Breathe Zen over the next months, starting with RevenueCat experiments with different offers and discounts.

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