Martin Hähnel

Good Apps: Endel

I am a person who needs background noise in some form or fashion. What that background noise needs to be changes over time. But right now I need pleasant noises. Not quite music (although slightly musical), but just something that satisfies my need for background noise.

Endel is really great at that. It offers quite a few features, but the main thing I like about it is that all the soundscapes it offers are high quality, adapt to your current situation and I also really appreciate the sheer number of options (which is not always a good thing, but here it somehow is!). By incorporating your circadian rhythm, your current movement and where you are in the world (and if there is light outside or not) it - depending on what soundscape you're listening to - will change the sound you'll hear. On top of that you can also manually change certain aspects of it like the focus soundscape lets you decide how the soundscape should feel in terms of being fluid, intense, structured and easy. Apart from those dynamic soundscapes, it also offers time boxed scenarios. Together, this is quite a comprehensive library of things to listen to. I like that it basically always has at least one thing to offer "while doing X", where "X" really can be anything: focus, relax, move and sleep are the big soundscape categories, but there's also wake up, nap, chores, mediate, etc.[1]

The UI is something you'll have to get used to, but otherwise I really don't have any complaints.

  1. Although I do mostly listen to the open ended focus, relax, move and sleep soundscapes, truth be told. It's still nice to know that there are shorter scenarios available to me. ↩︎