Help that arrives in two seconds.

Tap the icon. Before the screen has finished brightening, your phone is already pulsing a slow breathing rhythm you can follow with your eyes shut.

Version 1.0.1: a new face drawn from the icon, and the fixes behind it.

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Free and complete. No account, no subscription, works in airplane mode.

The session screen: a warm wave of light riding over cool water under a field of stars, with the words Breathe in.

During a panic attack, a splash screen is a locked door.

So are logins, mood check ins, content libraries and the question "what would you like to do today?" Working memory is gone, and the app you need is the one that has already started helping by the time you look at it.

The screen after a session: Still stormy, or passing, as two large buttons.

A rhythm you can feel, not one you have to watch

Every other breathing app puts a circle on a screen. Sway puts the rhythm in the vibration motor, so you can follow it lying in the dark, on a train, or with the phone still in your pocket. Nobody has to see you doing it. When you do look, the screen is one warm wave of light over cool water, rising as you breathe in and settling as you breathe out.

Breathe in

A gathering swell. The vibration rises like a wave coming in, and you rise with it.

Hold

Nothing at all. Stillness is the instruction, and it starts at zero seconds because holding your breath can make an attack worse.

Breathe out

A long train of pulses that fade and spread apart. The out breath is the longer half, always.

Then slower

Sessions open a little quicker than comfortable, to meet a racing breath where it is, and decelerate over three minutes.

The second half is what happens afterwards

Sway never dumps you back into a menu when the wave passes. It asks one question, with two answers, and follows whichever one you gave it.

The grounding menu: name what is here, something cold, or left right left, as three large cards.
Still stormy: three ways down. Counting the senses, cold water on the wrists, or slow alternating taps kept in time by the phone. Each one is a single instruction per screen, in type you can read through tears, advanced by tapping anywhere.
The storm log: five waves of increasing size, and context chips for home, transit, work, night and social.
Passing: two taps, both optional. How big it was, where you were, and then a closing card. There are no streaks here and nothing you can fail.
The Almanac showing ten storms saved, when they arrive, where you were, and how long they last.
Months later, the Almanac says things like "6 of 10 storms began with transit marked", and quietly tracks whether you are riding them out faster.

For the worst nights, and for the strangers

One tap from the session screen opens a shelf with three things on it, and none of them need a network.

  1. Your person. One number you chose on a calm day, one tap to the dialler at 3am.
  2. A crisis line for where you are. Bundled inside the app, with the month it was last checked printed underneath, because these numbers do change.
  3. A card you can hand to someone. Full screen, large type: what is happening, what to do, what not to say, and when to get medical help instead. It exists so you do not have to explain any of it while it is happening.
The bystander card: I am having a panic attack. It will pass. Please stay with me.

The promises, and how to check them

Nothing here can leave your phone

No network

Sway does not request the internet permission, which you can verify on the Play listing before you install it. Android will not let it open a connection at all, so the two second promise holds in a basement, a plane and a subway car. Point a packet sniffer at it. That is an invitation.

No account

There is no sign up, no email, no cloud and no analytics. Your storm log, your person and your settings live in this phone's private app storage and nowhere else. Export them as plain text whenever you want, or erase everything in two taps.

No price on the bad moment

The whole app is free, and none of it is a trial. There is no subscription, no in app purchase and no advertising. A recurring bill attached to panic would be both bad ethics and bad software, and an ad after a panic attack would be an obscenity.

No dark patterns

No streaks, no flame counters, no notification implying you have let yourself down, no mood score, no anxiety inventory. There is no number in this app you can fail. A bad month is a bad month, not a broken chain.

Built to be used four times a year and trusted every single time.

Get it on Google Play

Sway is a self help wellness tool. It is not a medical device, it does not diagnose anything, and it is not a treatment for panic disorder or any other condition. If you are in danger, or if what you are feeling is new, different or involves chest pain, call your local emergency number or one of the lines in the app rather than opening this.