Show HN: Guruka.com – free guided mediations. No signup, private, works offline

38 pointsposted 3 days ago
by eummm

16 Comments

Cider9986

3 days ago

That is cool that it works offline. I will not use it because I don't like the voices. The free meditation app I would recommend is the Healthy Minds program[1]. I have also seen Medito recommended, but the thing that I like about the HM Program is that it is a very straight curriculum, instead of various options scattered as options.

[1]https://www.humin.org/wellbeing-tools/app

eummm

2 days ago

HM looks great, but looks like they collect lot of personal data.

From their privacy policy:

The personal information we collect may include:

Name User name Email address Gender Birthday (month/year) Ethnicity Relationship Status Number of Family Members/Children/Children under 13 Experience with Meditation User generated content We may collect other information that does not reveal your specific identity, such as:

IP Address or other unique device identifier Information collected through cookies, pixel tags or other technologies App usage data Geo-location information User generated content Device generated data

Cider9986

a day ago

I agree, I wish they took privacy more seriously, as more software should.

Looking at it optimistically, they don't sell or share with data brokers/advertisers, you can block the offensive connections with a firewall, and the app doesn't ask for any information that is particularly sensitive.

Additionally, they use data people choose to share to improve the scientific understanding of meditation and mindfulness. I am someone that values privacy, but I don't find it egregious to use this app.

SockThief

3 days ago

This is great! I've been using Headspace, but recently I get a Duolingo vibe of it. It's still good, but Healthy Minds is in other league. Thank you!

high_pathetic

2 days ago

Ditto on the voices. Male voice sounds like a tin robot and it's distracting.

snthpy

2 days ago

Does anyone ever worry about prompt injection attacks against yourself in these?

When I was into hypnosis and NLP between one and two decades ago, I used to worry about what the instructions were once I was hypnotized. I lacked the terminology then but there days we would call these prompt injections, just against the human brain.

I guess social engineering is another form, although that's probably more akin to a CSRF or flawed auth logic exploit.

ProllyInfamous

3 days ago

Title should say "meditations" — app is not for actual dispute resolution (well, not directly).

Seems like the voices are text to speech? You could have an option to change the voice type as well as regenerate different scripts with a simple llm.

midnightn

2 days ago

Offline support is underrated for meditation apps — network interruptions mid-session are the opposite of calming

47282847

2 days ago

It’s obviously the unguided section where you sit with whatever emotions the disruption brings up for you!

underduck

2 days ago

I really like this. I tried korean language and the voice was bit off though. good work!

eummm

2 days ago

thank you for feedback! will think how to improve

throwaway81523

2 days ago

These are audio recordings right? Could they just say so?

eummm

2 days ago

adding text to speech is a great idea, thank you!