Hey HN!

I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pia (https://www.piahealth.co) which developed Lungy (https://www.lungy.app). Lungy is an iOS app that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging and beneficial to do. It’s been two years since Lungy launched (here’s the original ShowHN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34534615) and it's had a huge update and complete redesign. We rebuilt the whole app, and added a real-time 3D soft body solver which gives some really cool interactions like blobs / objects that inflate as you breathe. We also made a version for Vision Pro, called 'Lungy Spaces'.

My background is as a surgical trainee and I started building Lungy in 2020 during the first COVID lockdown in London. During COVID, there were huge numbers of patients coming off ventilators and patients are often given breathing exercises on a worksheet and disposable plastic devices called incentive spirometers to encourage deep breathing. This is intended to prevent chest infections and strengthen breathing muscles that have weakened. I noticed often the incentive spirometer would sit by the bedside, whilst the patient would be on their phone – this was the spark that lead to Lungy!

Since making the first version we’ve made exercises fully customisable (you can dial in exact timings for each breath phase), added new breathing indicators, learning modules, e.g. self-care for anxiety symptoms, and lots of new visuals. The free version gives you access to a new breathing exercise each day, whilst premium unlocks the full library of exercises, exercise data and visuals..

The visuals are mostly built using Metal (a couple use SpriteKit) and there are lots to choose from - boids, cloth sims, fluid sims, a hacky DLA implementation, rigid body + soft body sims - each one reacts to breath and touch. The audio uses AudioKit with a polyphonic synth and a sequencer plays generated notes from a chosen scale (you can mess around with the sequencer and synth in Settings/Create Music). The nice thing about the visuals + audio being generative is that the download size is relatively small with no other downloads. We’re still working on improving the breath detection, using ML - currently, it uses microphone input, with optional camera input to guide positioning.

We’re also close to finishing the medical device version - http://lungy.health - designed as a pulmonary rehab platform for patients with asthma, it should hopefully undergo early trials in the UK in 2026.

Thanks for reading - would love to hear any feedback!

https://www.lungy.app

Lungy Version 2 here: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1545223887

Any plans for an Android version? I'd love to try it, but I'm on the other side of the Apple App Store wall :(

I recall the original post about Lungy.

Having had an incentive spirometer prescribed for post-surgical use after being on bypass, my experience was that it seemed boring and like a waste of time, so anything that makes breathing exercises more engaging and feel more worthwhile is a win.

A friend of mine was working on this exact thing about 2 years ago in collaboration with the NHS before Google pulled half their stack out from under them. Incredibly sad on the whole but glad that it's happening in some form.

FDA approval pending?

Me and my brethren have been using this tons :) I could most respectfully request a breathholding feature, hyping one up to hold ones breath for a minute and reminding to pass it left

When I was a boy they called that “biofeedback”. Damn kids ruin everything.

How would you compare to a general meditation app like “Waking Up” curious if you’ve used it.

I tried this when it first came out but it always felt gimmicky and didn’t work randomly Will give it another try

Great idea and ux

Thanks for the reminder, I used to use Lungy a lot. Forgot about it.

I just tried v1 again, it blocks me from using it because it wants the microphone but I don’t want to give access. Can you make it optional in settings? Just following the visual is enough for me.

Don’t think it needed it when I used it. Does v2 also have the same issue?