FAQ

CHARM is a meditation and breathing app set among the planets. You choose one of nine worlds, each a full audio-visual environment that pairs real astronomy with binaural or isochronic sound and a slow, guided breath, and stay with it for as long as you like, to unwind, focus, or drift toward sleep. No streaks, no courses, no guilt loops.

CHARM is a free download, and a 7-day free trial opens every world and every feature with nothing held back. After the trial, one subscription keeps it all unlocked: $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year. There is no ad-supported tier and no locked-away worlds, because a calm space full of upsells is not a calm space.

Most meditation apps are built around courses, streaks, and daily reminders that quietly turn calm into a task. CHARM has none of that: no streaks, no notifications nagging you back, no guilt for skipping a month. Instead of a content library to work through, it gives you nine planet worlds to drop into, one slow guided breath at the centre of each, and real astronomy rather than stock nature loops. It is a place to breathe, not a program to complete.

CHARM is a mobile app for iPhone and Android, delivered through the App Store and Google Play. Sessions keep playing with the screen locked, and apart from a light space-weather feed and the occasional licence check, it works offline, so you can breathe on a plane or well off the grid.

Not at all. Binaural beats are a real, documented perceptual phenomenon (first described by Gerald Oster in 1973); the effect itself is not in dispute. What is still debated is whether they produce lasting benefit, and the evidence there is mixed, so we do not sell the tones as a cure. What we can say is that people genuinely feel them in the moment: a sense of focus, settling, or drift that many listeners find real and useful during a session. In CHARM the tones sit alongside the mechanism with the firmest science, slow exhale-weighted breathing, so the sound deepens the experience without carrying a promise it cannot keep.

No. CHARM contains zero astrology: no horoscopes, no birth charts, and no claim that planets influence you. The planets are evocative containers for real astronomy (every fact verified against NASA, ESA, and peer-reviewed sources), and the frequencies are brainwave bands, not planetary "vibrations."

Each world is tuned to the brainwave band conventionally associated with its intention: delta, theta, alpha, SMR, beta, or gamma. Earth alone is pinned to the Schumann resonance (7.83 Hz), the real geophysical frequency of the Earth–ionosphere cavity. The frequencies are not derived from orbital periods, are not solfeggio tones, and are not astrology.

The breath at the centre of CHARM rests on well-studied ground, and the sound and frequency design are laid out openly, with the strong evidence separated from the thin and every source named on the methodology page. CHARM is made by a small independent team led by its creator, Nik Thorne, a software engineer and long-time meditator who built it to the standard of honesty he wanted as a user. Where the science is settled we lean on it; where it is not, we say so plainly.

No. CHARM is not a medical device and never markets itself as one. Its standing line is: "Entrainment effects are modest and unproven: a calm space for breathing, not intended for treatment." It is not for use while driving or operating machinery, and it is not recommended for people with epilepsy or a seizure history, active psychosis, bipolar disorder in a manic phase, a pacemaker, or during pregnancy without medical advice; under-18s only with supervision.

CHARM is built around slow, exhale-weighted breathing, which is one of the better-evidenced ways to nudge the nervous system toward calm, and many people use it to wind down before sleep, settle an anxious moment, or find focus. That said, CHARM is not a medical treatment and makes no clinical claims. It offers a calm space and a steady rhythm; what that does for you is genuinely personal. The evidence, tiered honestly, is on the methodology page.

Headphones are recommended, and required for the binaural mode, because binaural beats depend on each ear hearing a slightly different tone. Every session also ships a speaker-safe isochronic mode (a single gated tone) that works on any speaker without headphones.

You choose: 10, 20, or 40 minutes, or an infinite loop that sustains with no fade-out until you stop it. The shape is a calm plateau: no crescendo, no coaching voice, no "session complete" fanfare. You arrive, you breathe, and you leave when you are done.

A YouTube track plays one fixed loop and hopes it lands. CHARM hands you the controls. Within each world you can shape the sound to fit the moment: binaural for headphones or speaker-safe isochronic, adjustable depth and length, all without ever changing the frequency chosen for that intention. That level of tuning simply is not something a static video can do. Wrap it in a guided breath, live astronomy that puts you somewhere real in the universe, and a space with no ads, notifications, or tracking that works offline, and you are paying for an instrument you play, not a loop you sit through.

CHARM is a free download with a 7-day free trial of everything. The CHARM subscription is $2.99 per month or $19.99 per year, auto-renewing and cancellable anytime, processed through the App Store or Google Play. There are no in-app purchases beyond the subscription.

CHARM collects no personal data beyond what the platform purchase system requires. There are no analytics SDKs, no tracking, and no behavioural profiles. Subscriptions run through Apple and Google, using an anonymous identifier and purchase records, and the live space-weather feed carries no personal information. Apart from that feed and the occasional licence check that confirms an active subscription, the app works offline.