1. Starting: one tap, and no decisions
The home screen offers three session lengths — one minute, two minutes, five minutes — and nothing else to configure. The app is already set to the length you used last time, so most sessions start with a single tap on a target you do not have to aim at.
You need no headphones, no sound, and nothing on screen. That is what makes it usable in a corridor, a lobby, or a shared office rather than only at home.
2. During: the screen goes dark and the phone takes over
The display goes completely dark for the whole session — on an OLED phone, the pixels are genuinely off. To anyone nearby, the phone looks idle. Your eyes and attention stay unspent for whatever comes next, which matters when what comes next is another person.
The rhythm arrives through vibration alone: in, hold, out, rest. There is nothing to watch that would tell you where you are in the breath, and nothing to listen to — the pattern in your palm is the instruction.
It starts where you are, not where it's going. A session opens on a faster breath and settles onto a calmer one over the first stretch. If you arrive agitated, the practice meets you there instead of demanding instant calm from the first breath.
3. Checking and stopping, without looking
- Tap once and the time remaining appears briefly, then clears itself. You can reassure yourself without ending the session by accident.
- Press and hold to end early. Leaving takes a deliberate act, so a brushed pocket or a knocked table never cuts the practice short.
- A distinct closing pulse tells you the time is up — softer than the breath pattern, and unmistakable. You never have to look at the phone to know it finished.
If you use a screen reader, the session is narrated rather than silent: how much time is left, and how to end it. The dark screen is navigable rather than a void.
4. After: a streak, and nothing else
The completion screen is one line of type and your streak count. Any session on a given day counts towards that day, so practising more than once is never penalised, and the reward arrives at the moment you earned it rather than in a weekly digest.
If you want the practice to have a place in the day, you can turn on one daily reminder at a time you choose — and move it, or switch it off, whenever you like. The wording gives nothing away: the app name and a neutral line, nothing a colleague glancing at your lock screen could read anything into. You are only asked about reminders after you have already completed sessions, never before the app has proved itself.
What it feels like on your particular phone
Hardware differs, and the app does not pretend otherwise:
- On a phone with a high-fidelity haptic engine, you feel a full breath envelope that swells and fades — closer to breathing than to buzzing.
- On simpler or older hardware, you feel a recognisable version of the same breath. The practice still works.
- On a device with no usable vibration motor, the app says so plainly rather than leaving you wondering why nothing is happening.
Strength is yours either way. The adjust panel has a vibration strength control, free for everyone regardless of subscription, tuned across a narrow range around a default — enough to sit right in a hand, a pocket or on a desk, and never enough to be loud in a room. If your device offers only one strength, the app tells you instead of showing a slider that does nothing.
Your first run
The first time you open Tacet, you feel the breathing vibration within seconds — an on-screen pulse moves in time with it, so you can connect what you feel to what the rhythm is asking of you. You are told plainly when to look away, how long the session runs and how to stop it, and then you flow straight into a real session without another decision. You can skip it at any point and land on the normal home screen, and if something interrupts you, it resumes where you left off.