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Show HN: Timbre – An app that finds the best sounds for your sleep (apps.apple.com)

83 points by bryan-vh ↗ HN
Hey all, I'm currently a solo iOS developer who just released my first app, Timbre, onto the App Store (iPhone only for now). Here's a demo to show you how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALoPAFb31Bk.

Timbre originally came about because I wanted to build a sleep sounds & sleep tracker app. I had used Headspace, Calm, Pillow, etc. and figured that instead of paying $70 / year I could just build my own app and pay $100 / year (not a great plan in retrospect). As I started building Timbre, I realized that one of the biggest issues I had with these other apps is that I could never really see which sounds genuinely helped me sleep. With that in mind, I pivoted on my original idea and decided to really hone in on connecting sleep quality and sounds.

Using a custom ML model, Apple's CoreML framework and HealthKit's sleep stage data, I made it so that Timbre could calculate a personal sleep quality score. Therefore, when you record a sleep session while listening to a sound, the app can rank the sounds you've listened to based on your sleep quality scores over time.

Of course, the app also has a smart alarm, offline support, sleep analysis and more, but I'd love to get some feedback & suggestions from the demo video. Also feel free to ask me any questions and I'd be happy to answer them!

83 comments

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olah_1
> based on your sleep quality scores

Do I need an Apple Watch in order to track sleep quality? What if I only have an iPhone?

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bryan-vh
Yes, the Apple Watch is what provides the sleep stage data. If you only have an iPhone there's no in-depth sleep stage data which is what the model uses to predict a sleep quality score. The disclaimer didn't show in the video since I had closed it already.
zenapollo
Do you happen to know if the Oura ring, the Whoop, or other biometric devices can feed in that data to Apple health? If so you should make people aware of that possibility.
bryan-vh
It currently only supports Apple Watch, but I'll release an update soon so it can support Apple Health compatible devices. The only requirement is that those devices can export sleep stage data and other metrics to Apple Health, thanks for the feedback!
EntreEden
Looks really clean, I like the design.

For the demo video I wish there was a voiceover explaining what you're clicking through or what the features are. Like Someone posted it'd be nice to understand how the sleep quality is calculated.

user_7832
Why was this comment dead? It seems quite normal for such a thread.
bryan-vh
Thanks! Yeah I tried to put together a quick screen recording, so apologies about the lack of VoiceOver or feature walkthrough. If you go to https://www.timbreapp.io/ there should be more details there :)
jamil7
Not available outside of the US
bryan-vh
Sorry, working to get it available in other regions, will probably release to the UK and Australia in the next week or so!
jamil7
I don't live in either of those countries. Plenty of apps aren't localised for every region, and plenty of people speak English as a second language. I can decide for myself whether I want to use your app or not, the App Store already tells me which languages it supports. English also happens to be my first language, but if it wasn't, I'd probably still prefer to use it instead of some automated translation.

Also sorry, but why would it take a week to release in the UK and Australia? You literally click a few buttons in App Store Connect, and you're done.

From someone who's released a few apps, keep in mind every localisation has to be updated whenever you make a release after changing your copy/UI and can considerably slow down early-stage development. It can be a great way to expand later on, but I'd be cautious about trying to support numerous languages out of the gate.

bryan-vh
Yeah, my mistake, posted up above that it's now available in all countries!
raydiatian
> I could never really see which sounds genuinely helped me sleep

Have you tried “no sound”? Your free competitor is occupying market share and you need to figure out a way to pivot and compete.

Lmfao.

beebeepka
The entire concept of sleep/walk/calory tracking is entirely alien to me. I really can't help but laugh at this madness.

However, it seems reasonable to me that some individuals, not necessarily people, may need actual noise. Computer nerds waking up when power goes out (fans and HDDs turning silent) is not unheard of.

Normal is often the state of things when someone was still young/new at a place

swalsh
"no sound" doesn't work for me, in the absence of sound all I hear is myself, and my thoughts. Meditation apps actually work really well in helping me quiet my thoughts and fall asleep. Funny enough, economic or history lectures work really well too. I love those topics, but it clears the thoughts in my head I just see a story playing out in my head as I fall asleep.

One of the major issues is I have relatively high anxiety, and i'll just be stuck in a stress loop keeping me awake.

bryan-vh
I personally sleep better with sounds, so that's why I created the app. If you sleep better without sounds that's great! I understand the app may not be for everyone, just wanted to share it with those who may find it interesting.
raydiatian
$5/mo for lullabies for adults feels… I mean do you, build that side-income
rcr
I have adhd. I find listening to familiar voices talking gives my brain just enough of something to focus on to calm my anxiety. Starcraft vods are my go to.
IG_Semmelweiss
>>> using a custom ML model, Apple's CoreML framework and HealthKit's sleep stage data,

Can you elaborate what data are you using for ML purposes? Specifically, what permissions is the iphone requestion to collect data ?

What exactly is allowing you to make assertions about quality to sleep, except logical stuff like ambient sounds like snoring, etc?

Do i need an apple watch??

bryan-vh
The iPhone requests permission to HealthKit, which comes through the Apple Health app. You will need an Apple Watch to record the sleep stage data during a sleep session, which the ML model then uses to calculate a sleep quality score from 1-100. All of the sleep quality scores are estimates, which is why I made it so that users could review and update their score based on how they felt in the morning, which in turn would tune the ML model to their sleep preferences.
motohagiography
That feedback cycle from the healthkit and mapping it to sounds is brilliant. It reminds me a bit of Richard Feynman's lucid dreaming hacks, where he was able to drop into a lucid state using some remembered cues, and invertedly, this is using ML to discover external sound cues to affect sleep state. I wonder what would happen if it worked too well?
DueDilligence
.. three days is most definitely NOT enough time to trial this kind of app.
bryan-vh
Thanks for the feedback! I'll consider bumping it up to a week, there's also a 2 week option with the annual option if you'd rather do that!
pizzafeelsright
I have always appreciated: Silence. Pure silence. Dark as possible. About 56F.

The kid has white noise and Alexa playing at volume 5-6 all night.

genter
I prefer my neighbors Dodge Charger with no muffler. Nothing will scare the shit out of you at 1:00 in the morning like the rumble of a V8.
Probiotic6081
Can you set it on a timer?
bryan-vh
That's one of the features I still have to add. I assume you mean like "after 45 minutes stop playing" or something like that, correct?
Probiotic6081
exactly. if it's just about helping your son fall asleep that should be plenty and not waste any unnecessary energy!
malfist
It's not just energy. There's been some research showing that people who sleep all night, every night with white noise suffer hearing loss.

I prefer to have my sleep sounds go off after a while for that reason

bryan-vh
Good to know, will definitely look to add this in the next update!
personjerry
56F is cold as heck, what??
PaulDavisThe1st
Perfect sleeping temperature. A bit chilly to wake up to, but pure delight for sleeping.
balfirevic
LOL, perfect for me would be 26C (around 79F).
glandium
Ideal temperature is said to be 65F (18C). Did you flip the numbers?
maroonblazer
...and a weighted blanket, like the Bearaby Tree Napper.
Probiotic6081
I sometimes listen to Deutschlandfunk to fall asleep. The programming is great, but I need to mute it or turn it off entirely at ~23:57 flat or else I'll puke because in a disgusting exhibit of nationalism, they play the German and the European anthems at the end of every single day. But as another commenter has pointed out, their diverse and thought-provoking yet entertaining programming is great for tuning out your inner monologue and help you fall asleep when you feel stressed or anxious.
seabass-labrax
> The programming is great, but I need to mute it or turn it off entirely at ~23:57 flat

What, surely not - I tune into Bayerischer Rundfunk at null Uhr specifically so that I do hear the national anthem! Gott mit dir, du Land der Bayern...

user_7832
Bit tangential, but Google Nest's sleep sounds are really nice. I often suspect letting it run through the night significantly boosts the deepness of morning sleep. The hub's radar sleep sensing is pretty neat too.
sandworm101
I dont trust google to watch me sleep.
vineyardmike
Be that as it may be, plenty of people use Google products and may learn something.

the Google nest hub has a radar for sleep tracking, which I find really innovative. I don’t think they’re the first, but it’s a pretty common product and it works well. You point the screen at your bed, and the radar is sensitive enough to see if you’re laying down or moving a lot on your side of the bed. No wearing any watch, no expensive single-use device (eg a bed pad) and it can tell how restful the night was. I have no idea how accurate it is, but anecdata says it works well enough for casual use.

liamwire
Unavailable in Australia, it seems.
bryan-vh
Should have it out in Australia within a week or so!
white_dragon88
So why bother advertising it now? Seems like you jumped the gun.
bryan-vh
I launched initially in US & Canada, was planning to rollout to other countries after.
pjerem
There are a lot of non US people in HN. I’m European and it’s not just unavailable, you can’t even access the App Store page so no screenshots, no description, no teasing.

However, I’m not an app developer and because you are far from alone, I always wondered why it is useful to limit your audience to US only?

bryan-vh
I limited to US & Canada only because the text in the app is only in English. I have to setup localization in order to get it properly translated for countries where English is not a primary language. I do plan to add support this in the future, but can't give an exact estimate right now.
mz00
Plenty of apps are available in English outside the anglosphere. Seems like a US-centric oversight not releasing it to “the rest of the world” as usual.
bryan-vh
Fair enough, will make it available in all countries, thanks for the feedback!
latexr
You’re on HN. Everyone here understands English to a degree. It is very common for people in countries where English is not the primary language to be able to speak it fluently.

You just presented your app to a bunch of people who can’t see it and who will never bother to give it a second look. In other words, you’re losing a significant number of potential customers for no gain. Those people will in turn not upvote this submission, further restricting your reach even to those who can use it.

Waiting for doing localisation before launching to other countries is the first big mistake. The second is, as long as you’re restricting the audience, not having a website where other people can see the app to give them a reason to check back later.

bryan-vh
Should be available in all countries now, thank you for the feedback!
ada1981
I was hoping this was going to somehow monitor my sleep and split test sounds throughout the night and dynamically generate sounds.

Maybe in a 2.0!

bryan-vh
Good idea! I did make it so that if you switch between the available sounds throughout a sleep session (if you woke up to do that) it would take that into account when determining the sound rankings.
sandworm101
Call me strange: youtube. Neebs gaming channel. Thier six-hour supercut playing sea of thieves. I dont know why, but i have never gotten more than an half-hour in without falling asleep. I now have it saved locally so i can watch it on airplanes. I have never played the game. I really have no concept of why listening to other people play the game puts me to sleep so fast.
monocularvision
I realize that any time someone posts an app there are complaints about pricing, but here I was expecting a flat rate since it appears the entire app is local so there shouldn’t be recurring costs only to find it is $30 a year? I get wanting to have a sustainable business and that subscriptions are the future but that seems a bit off considering the lack of online component. Unless I am missing something?
bryan-vh
Currently all of the sounds are actually online, with the option to add downloads. I could change that to be entirely local, but would make it a bit harder to add new sounds without requiring an update of the app. I've debated adding in a "lifetime" option so that it's only a one-time payment for everything, and may do that, thanks for the feedback!
biztos
Why not just have a core set of sounds pre-downloaded?
busymom0
Put the sound files on an Amazon s3 or cloudflare r2 bucket and have the app download them. Maybe put a json file on there too and the app checks if the json has any files which aren't downloaded and if so, it downloads them.
Arcanum-XIII
Ans you know that Amazon and Cloudflare are not free, yes ?
busymom0
I know. But I doubt the total file size is too big. So storage costs will be extremely low. And if they use cloudflare r2, there isn't even any egress fee. The app is already charging $7 per month subscription. Even a single purchase would most likely cover the entire storage cost.
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atum47
One question: why only iPhone? Not to start a brand war, but wouldn't be better to create webapp and embedding it on a native app? That way you could have a version for Android as well.
bryan-vh
Mainly because I'm an iOS developer, and so it was just easiest to start there.
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meatjuice
geoblocked in my country :(
bryan-vh
What country? Planning to launch in UK and Australia soon
2Gkashmiri
Is there s say to use your smart watch to detect if user has fallen asleep and perform "pause" action on any content playing on phone or something?
bryan-vh
Not at the moment, will look into adding that alongside the "stop sound after xyz minutes" feature mentioned elsewhere.

To note, if you go to Clock on your iPhone you can set a timer to go off after a set amount of time with "Stop Playing" which should turn off any audio that's playing after that time is up.

busymom0
The "sign up" button's hit area is only on the actual text and not around it within the button. So it took me a few times to realize why my tap on the button wasn't working. Only when I tapped the text itself did it work.

I really like the art. How did you make it?

bryan-vh
Thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely fix that for the next version.

My uncle actually did the art for me. I believe he used some hand drawn digital tools, but I'd have to ask him again. I knew I really wanted to have a grayscale background with a single color to highlight an object in each image and I'd say he delivered on that really well.

busymom0
Tell your uncle that he did a fabulous job!
lencastre
Not available in the App Store in Portugal
bryan-vh
Updated, should be available now :)
bryan-vh
Just updated the app to be available in all countries. Thanks to everyone for the feedback on this!
wingerlang
Nice, are the charts from Swift? Especially the hypnogram timeline.
bryan-vh
Yeah, I'm using the Swift Charts framework
smcleod
$8/mo AUD seems pretty steep, that’s competing with streaming services etc…
moneywoes
exactly, for a consumer app i find it excessive
bzmrgonz
Just as long as they don't get rid of winget, I don't care. Since they are converting the OS to an advertisement platform, they may be thinking of getting rid of winget, since that's how to avoid ads.
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bryan-vh
Hey all! Just wanted to say that I’ve updated the app to version 1.2.0. I added support for turning off the sound after some time, fixed the bugs y’all reported and updated the sleep tab UI to be more intuitive. The app is also now available in all countries and there is now a week long free trial for the monthly subscription. I appreciate all of the great feedback and thank you to all of you who signed up and tried Timbre out!!