The graphic rectangular complication in the centre of the Series 4 Apple Watch shows the 7 day progress tracker. The graphic corner gauge complication at the bottom right indicates the number of minutes required to reach your daily target.
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Overview
Overview
As with the iPhone version of the MeditateAide app the Apple watch version provides a number of useful functions to help you establish and maintain a regular daily meditation activity, accessable independently and directly from your Apple Watch, without the need to remove your iPhone from your pocket or bag, or even have your iPhone with you.
The main purpose of the app is to provide a simple meditation timer, allowing you to quickly set session and interval times, and select associated bells and sounds, all of which are played out from your watch speaker or attached headphones.
Uniquely available to the Apple watch version is the heart rate monitoring feature, which shows your current heart rate with an associated graph in real time during your meditation session.
Two timer options are provided, one which results in your Mindful Minutes data being updated within the Apple Health app, and one which doesn't, useful for when you want to time and monitor your heart rate during informal mindful walking or other mindful activities.
Additional features available on the Apple watch version include:
A progress tracker which shows your daily meditation target in minutes and displays progress on a weekly graph (available as an option for your Series 4 watch face complication).
A history feature which shows you a table of all your Mindful Minutes sessions held in the Apple Health app for the last week, together with the individual heart rate graphs for each session.
A timeline graph which highlights your meditation sessions within a 24 hour heart rate graph over the previous week, with zoom and pan option down to a 30 minute window.
An option to record and playback 5 voice memos each of 10 second duration, useful to capture any insights or urgent ideas that come to you during a meditation session.
A settings page to allow you to set your daily meditation target, to select the app colours which set the best mood for meditation, to define the way Complications are used to show your progress with graphs and gauges on your watch clock face (requires Apple Watch Series 4), and various bell sounds (two of which can be recorded directly on your watch). There is also the option to speak out the timer count down value or your heart rate at each interval during a meditation session, in various different languages, which could be used as a mindfulness trigger.
Any memos or bell sounds recorded on the Apple watch are also available on the iPhone version of the app, and in a similar fashion, any memos or bell sounds recorded on the iPhone version are also available on the watch version of the app.
The timer page allows you to set session and interval times and to select the associated bells sounds.
Timer Page
Timer Page
The opening first page shows the main meditation timer. Each button can be tapped to toggle through the various options for that button.
The top left button selects the interval audio sound that plays at each interval time, which includes: beep, ping #1, ping #2, bell #1, bell #2, speak timer value, speak heart rate value, recorded audio #1, recorded audio #2, haptic feedback. The beep and ping options revert to vibrate options when the watch Silent Mode is turned on in the watch settings.
The top right button selects the interval period, with values of none, 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes or 30 minutes.
The bottom left button selects the session start and session end audio sound, providing the same options as that for the interval sound.
The central two buttons are the minute and second timer display buttons which, when tapped when the timer is not running, increase and decrease the session timer duration, starting at 1 minute and 5 minutes, increasing in 10 minute intervals up to a maximum of 90 minutes. If the interval time is greater than the session time then there will not be an interval sound.
The bottom right button starts and stops the timer. Sessions started with this button are uploaded into the Mindful Minutes area of the Apple Health app for storage (if permission was provided when the app was first installed).
When the timer is running the buttons disappear to simplify the display, but can be redisplayed again by tapping the screen, then hidden again by tapping the timer value again.
A running timer with associated sounds will continue to operate using the workout mode of the watch, even when the watch screen is idle.
A number of additional features are provided to help sustain a regular meditation practice.
Menu Page
Menu Page
Scrolling down to the menu section will provide access to a set of buttons, which can be tapped to access the Progress page, the History page, the Timeline page, the Insights page, the Settings page and this Aide instructions page.
These menu buttons will disappear when the timer is running, to simplify the display.
Heart rate data is displayed for each meditation session.
Heart Rate Page
Heart Rate Page
The heart rate feature is unique to the Apple watch version of the MeditateAide app and is not availble on the iPhone or iPad versions of the app. Scrolling down to the bottom of the opening page will display the heart rate timer and graph. During a timed meditation session this will show a realtime view of your heart rate with an associated graph with a summary of your highest, lowest and average heart rate for the current session.
The additional start button in this section will disappear during a main meditation session, but otherwise is available to start an informal session, which does not update the Apple Health app or show in the History page.
Tapping the heart rate graph will cycle through three different scale settings.
Heart rate data captured on the Apple watch during a timed meditation session is recorded within the Apple Health app and can be viewed within some of the other MeditateAide app screens both on the Apple watch and on the iPhone.
A 7 day progress chart indicates how you are progressing with your daily target.
Progress Page
Progress Page
Tapping the Progress menu button displays a page which shows the minutes remaining to allow you to reach your daily target, your current daily target and what has currently been achieved. A graph shows your daily progress for the current week. Lines coloured as grey indicate a day in the past.
This graph can be selected in the settings page to show as a Complication on your watch face (requires Apple Watch Series 4).
A 7 day history of your recorded meditation sessions is provided together with a heart rate graph for each session.
History Page
History Page
Tapping the History menu button displays a page which shows a heart rate graph for the most recent stored meditation session, providing information on the start and end time of the session, and the highest, lowest and average heart rate values during that session.
Rotating the crown or swiping across the graph will refresh the graph showing equivalent heart rate information on consecutive meditation sessions recorded by the Apple Watch for the past week.
Tapping the heart rate graph will cycle through three different scale settings.
A table below the graph shows all the stored Mindful Minutes sessions retrieved for the last week from the Apple Health app. Tapping each table entry will display the heart rate graph for that entry, if the heart rate data is held locally on the watch.
The timeline graph summarises your heart rate over the last 7 days, indicating the times of each meditation session.
Timeline Page
Timeline Page
Tapping the Timeline menu button displays a page which shows a timeline graph of your heart rate over the latest 24 hour period with an indication within that period when a meditation session was recorded.
The highest, lowest and average heart rate values are shown for the visible period. The heart rate and last recorded time displayed by the graph is also displayed.
The top right button will zoom into the timeline to a period of 24 hours, 12 hours, 6 hours, 3 hours, 1 hour and 30 minutes. The top left button will reset the graph back to the latest 24 hour timeline and default scale.
Tapping the graph will cycle through three different scale settings. Rotating the crown or swipping across the graph will pan across the timeline allowing you to zoom into and view different time periods over the last 7 days.
If a gap of greater than 3 hours is detected in the 24 hour heart rate data then the time duration of the gap is shown on the top of the graph, which can be used as an indication of sleep time in each 24 hour period, useful if you charge your watch overnight.
Up to 5 voice memos can be recorded directly from the watch to capture any important thoughts and ideas during a meditation session.
Insights Page
Insights Page
During a meditation session interesting thoughts and ideas can arise which you may want to remember and review at a later time. To avoid disturbing your session by dwelling on them or breaking off to write them down, a useful approach is to quickly record them so you can review them after the session is ended.
Tapping the Insights menu button displays a page which allows up to 5 voice memos to be recorded and played back directly on the Apple Watch, each with a maximum duration of 10 seconds. Recordings made on the watch app will be reflected on the associated iPhone app and recordings made on the associated iPhone app will be reflected on the watch app.
When the Insights page is displayed tap on one of the 5 record buttons to open the standard watch voice memo page and use the watch microphone to record your voice memo. The microphone and speaker on the watch is used unless bluetooth headphones are linked to the watch.
During a timed meditation session the force tap option in the MeditateAide main screen can be used to quickly access the Insights menu directly.
Your daily target, app colours, complications and bell sounds can be configured from the settings page.
Settings Page
Settings Page
Tapping the Settings menu button displays a page which provides access to a range of app settings.
The Target setting allows a daily target to be set in minutes. Tapping the minute and seconds button increases and decreases the target value from 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, then increments of 10 minutes up to a maximum of 180 minutes. This value is automatically synchronised with the iPhone version of the app to keep the two devices the same.
The colour section allows you to set a button and timer colour which reflects across all the various screens and graphs. Tapping each respective button cycles around the available colour options.
If you have an Apple Watch Series 4 then the Complications settings allows you to define how the available graphics based complications appear on the new Infograph or Infograph Modular watch faces. Simpler complications are available for the older watch faces to show either the app icon or progress against the defined daliy meditation target.
The four different graphic complications are graphicRectangular, graphicCorner, graphicCircular and graphicBezel.
For the graphicRectangular complication, options are available to show either the app icon, the progress graph, the timeline graph, the heart rate graph from the timer page, or the last selected heart rate graph from the history page.
For the graphicCorner complication options are available to show either the app icon, the icon with the current progress against target, a gauge showing progress against the daily target, or a second type of gauge showing progress against the daily target.
A similar set of options are available for the graphicCircular and graphicBezel complications.
When the spoken 'speech' or 'heart' option is selected for either the interval or session timer, the spoken volume can be set by the speech volume setting. The Language setting allows one of 22 languages to be selected. A random option is available at the end of the list to allow a random language to be used each time the heart rate or timer setting is spoken.
The Audio1 and Audio2 options in the Sound section allows you to record and playback two custom audio sounds of 10 seconds duration to be used as a session or interval bell. The audio is recorded and played back directly from the watch. These two recordings are automatically synchronised with the iPhone version of the MeditateAide app. The remaining sound options allow you to listen to the other available options for the interval and sessions bells, which are bell1, bell2, beep, haptic feedback, ping1 and ping2. The audio1 and audio2 and bell1 and bell2 options will still play if the watch Silent Mode is turned on whereas the other sound options will not play a sound but will result in various types of vibrations.
User guide information is available from within the app on the watch.
Aide Page
Aide Page
Selecting the Aide menu option will provide access to help text covering the main features of the MeditateAide app.
Installation
Installation
The iPhone part of the app is required to install the corresponding watch app onto the Apple Watch and to enable the required access permissions to the Apple Health app.
The iPhone part of the app should be opened at initial watch install time to enable the Health app permissions.
Two permissions are required: one to read Heart Rate and Mindful Minutes information from Apple Health app, and one to write Heart Rate and Mindful Minutes information to Apple Health app.
An additional permission is required for accessing the watch microphone. When the microphone is first accessed within the Insights or bell recording feature, a request to access the watch microphone will appear on the watch.
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