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A guided tour

You are deciding whether this app is worth your time. Here is exactly what it does.

HeadPause is a practice tool for balance, stillness, steadiness, and ear calm. It reads head motion from the sensors in your AirPods and turns it into a small, honest set of signals. This page walks through every screen, every mode, and every metric in the order you would see them.

It is not a medical device. It is a patient, quiet ruler you can practice against.

Part 1 · Orientation

What HeadPause actually is.

Before the tour, the one-paragraph framing. Why head motion, why AirPods, and what the app does with what it reads.

1.1 · The premise

Your AirPods already know where your head is.

The motion sensors in AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max track head pitch, roll, and yaw many times a second. HeadPause is the practice loop built around that signal, and it adapts honestly to whatever audio output you have, instead of locking you out when the AirPods aren't paired.

There are four practice modes. Balance runs clinician-style canalith repositioning maneuvers for people working on positional vertigo. Still is a quiet, eyes-closed steadiness session with a calm score. Motion is a horizon-hold practice for moving environments, cars, trains, planes, screen fatigue, the blurry hour after travel. Ring is a sound module for ringing, buzzing, or fullness in your ears.

Practice happens on-device. No microphone, no account, no ads, no third-party analytics. HealthKit is opt-in and only writes Mindful Minutes when you turn it on in Settings. iCloud sync is opt-in and stays in your private container.

1.2 · Ruler, not coach

The single rule the app tries not to break.

HeadPause will not tell you whether you are doing well. It will tell you that your held-steady percent was 72, your peak drift was 11 degrees, and your calm score was 58.

Whether that is progress is yours to decide.

1.3 · Honest hardware fallback

The same app, three different capability stories.

The app reads your audio route at launch and adapts. With motion-capable AirPods, you get the full experience: pose-guided Balance, calm scoring in Still, live horizon in Motion. With any other headphones (wired EarPods, generic Bluetooth), you get voice walkthroughs and ambient guidance, but no pose scoring. With no headphones at all, audio routes through the iPhone speaker. Voice walkthroughs in Balance, soundscape and voice in Still, voice cues in Motion, and Ring's sound bed all play through the phone. Head tracking and scoring need motion-capable AirPods, but every module still launches and runs. The session screens say which mode you're in so the metric ceiling is never a surprise.

Part 2 · First launch

What opening the app for the first time feels like.

Six short cards, one mandatory safety acknowledgement, an optional 30-second baseline reading, and a session that adapts to whatever audio you have. No account, no email, no sign-up.

2.1 · The welcome card

You tap the icon. This is what loads.

A single card with the lime crescent logo and the brand line: HeadPause, Vertigo, BPPV & Balance Coach. One sentence under the title explains the four practices in plain English.

One button, Begin. Five page dots tell you there are four more cards ahead. A small Skip intro link in the top-right lets returning users jump straight to the safety acknowledgement on page 4.

2.2 · What brings you here?

The needs picker shapes your first session.

Four feeling cards: I feel spinny or off-balance (Balance), My head feels noisy or tense (Still), Cars, screens, or travel bother me (Motion), and My ears need calm (Ring). Pick anything that fits, multi-select. HeadPause uses your picks to suggest the first session you start.

If you don't pick anything, the button reads Skip for now. The app falls back to a 3-minute Still session as the safe default first practice.

Needs picker with four feeling cards: spinny, noisy head, travel bother, ears need calm

2.3 · Your audio, honestly

The headphones page tells you what you'll get.

The card reads your current audio route and labels it accurately, AirPods connected. Head tracking is active. for motion-capable AirPods, or a softer fallback message if you're on EarPods or the speaker. Below it, two short lines explain what each capability unlocks: pose guidance with motion-capable AirPods, voice walkthroughs without them.

This is also when iOS asks for the one motion permission HeadPause needs. The prompt is intentionally deferred to this page so the user has context for what motion does.

Headphones page showing AirPods connected with head tracking active

2.4 · The safety acknowledgement

One mandatory tap before the app opens.

HeadPause is a wellness app, not a medical device. The fourth onboarding page makes that explicit and asks for an unambiguous tap on I understand. The page also lists the red-flag symptoms that mean “stop and call a clinician” (sudden severe headache, hearing loss paired with vertigo, weakness, double vision, fainting).

The acknowledgement is versioned and timestamped. If we ever revise the disclaimer, returning users will be asked to re-acknowledge before the next launch, same gate, same wording, same one tap.

What we record

Disclaimer version, Unix timestamp, app build. Stored locally and echoed to the diagnostic log. No content analysis, no sharing.

Safety acknowledgement page with the I understand tap target

2.5 · Set your starting point

An optional 30-second baseline reading.

The fifth card offers a quiet day-zero anchor. With motion-capable AirPods connected, you can sit still for 30 seconds and let HeadPause record your resting head drift. That reading becomes the first entry in your rolling 14-day baseline, so a month from now the app can show you the difference: your drift was 8.2 degrees; now it is 4.1 degrees.

Two CTAs sit on the card. Run 30-second baseline in lime, and Skip, I will do this later as a quiet text link. Both advance the same way. If you skip, you can run the baseline anytime from Settings, Health and privacy. The app does not nag.

Set your starting point card with Run 30-second baseline and Skip options

2.6 · Your first week is ready

The plan card and the Start Day 1 button.

The sixth and final card sets the expectation: today, a 3-minute Still session, eyes closed, head quiet. One bullet underneath explains the daily calm baseline you're building. Start Day 1 is the only button.

Onboarding is over. The next thing on screen is the Home tab.

Your first week is ready card with Start Day 1 CTA

Part 3 · Home

The check-in card and the daily plan.

Tell HeadPause what you feel right now. It picks a short session and shows it on the same screen. A quiet 15-second steadiness reading lives below.

3.1 · Today's check-in

Pick a feeling, get a session.

The dark check-in card asks What do you need right now? with four small tiles, Balance, Still, Motion, Ring. Tapping a tile updates the recommendation card below in place: title, duration, and a one-line description of what the session will do.

The Begin CTA on the recommended-session card is the fastest path into practice. One tap from opening the app to a running session.

Home check-in card with four feeling tiles and a recommended Still session below

3.2 · Steady Check

A quiet 15-second steadiness reading.

When motion-capable AirPods are connected, a small Steady Check card appears below the recommendation. Tap it, sit still for 15 seconds, and the app records pitch and roll drift against a rolling 14-day baseline. The result is a short verdict, settled, slightly elevated,elevated, never a number that pretends to be a clinical score.

Steady Check never tightens your sensitivity for you. If your reading is elevated, the app may loosen the next Still session's tolerance so you don't fight a false fail. It will not silently make your routines harder.

3.3 · The header

Settings on the left, capability chip on the right.

Every tab shares the same header, gear button on the left, brand wordmark in the middle, audio capability chip on the right. The chip is the single visual signal of your hardware state: green earbuds when motion-capable AirPods are paired, muted when they're not.

3.4 · Weekly digest

A small Monday-morning summary of last week.

On Mondays, if you have at least one session in the previous seven days, a quiet digest card appears on Home between the Steady Check and the weekly plan strip. The card shows your this-week average calm score, a delta vs last week (lime when up, muted when flat or down), and a one-line stats row: 3 sessions, 1 partial, 2 anxious check-ins, 5 calm. A targeted suggestion sits below the stats, drawn from the same recommender that drives Home's daily picks.

A small dismiss × in the corner clears the card for the rest of the week. It returns the following Monday with fresh numbers. The digest never auto-shares, never sends a notification, never leaves your phone. It is just a quiet weekly mirror you can choose to look at or not.

Weekly digest card on Home with this-week calm score, delta, and stats

3.5 · Feel check

How are you, right now?

Every time you tap Begin on any session, in any of the four modules, a small sheet asks one question. Three buttons: Anxious · Neutral · Calm. A small Skip link in the corner if you'd rather not say. Any tap advances the session.

The choice is logged with the session and used in three quiet ways. Still picks a tolerance window that matches: anxious gets a forgiving 12-degree window, neutral gets the medium 8-degree default, calm gets a tight 5-degree window. The recommender watches your week. A third anxious rating in a row pivots tomorrow's suggestion away from Motion and toward Mask or Still. Progress shows a small emoji on each session row so the trend is visible without becoming a number.

Skip is treated as nothing, never inferred. The app never assumes how you feel. The only effect of skipping is that you keep your default tolerance and the recommender doesn't learn from this session.

Feel-check sheet with Anxious, Neutral, Calm, and Skip

Part 4 · Balance

Vertigo and BPPV routines, picked by symptom.

Six symptom cards. Tap what you feel, the app shows the matching repositioning maneuver, voice walks you through every step.

4.1 · Symptom-first picker

The first decision is what you feel.

Six symptom cards lead with plain language; the recognized clinical method name lives as a secondary pill underneath.

My eyes cannot lock steady → Gaze Stabilization (free)
I want a general balance practice → Brandt-Daroff (free)
Spinning when I lie back → Epley maneuver, right or left side
Rolling in bed feels off → BBQ Roll, right or left side
Quick side change feels better → Semont maneuver, right or left side
I need a gentler reset → Half-Somersault / Foster maneuver

Pro symptoms render with a small Pro lock chip; the chip is a tap target, not a hidden row, so a free user can still read what each routine treats before deciding to upgrade.

Balance tab with symptom cards leading with plain language and clinical method names underneath

4.2 · Side selection

For routines that have a sided form.

Epley, BBQ Roll, and Semont each have a right and a left version. Tapping one of those symptoms drops you into a short side picker, Use the right-ear sequence or Use the left-ear sequence. If you don't know which side, the screen suggests Brandt-Daroff (which works on either side) and recommends a clinician for a Dix-Hallpike test.

4.3 · Capability-aware coaching

How the routine actually runs depends on your audio.

With motion-capable AirPods: pose-guided steps. The app knows when your head reaches the expected angle and only advances the timer once you're holding position. A form score is the percent of step time spent inside the target window.

With any other headphones: voice walkthroughs only. The full Shimmer voice script reads each step, with the timer running in parallel. No pose scoring; the recap shows what you completed without a fake number.

Without headphones: the voice walkthrough plays through the iPhone speaker. The full Shimmer voice script reads each step the same way it does on EarPods. No pose scoring, but the routine itself runs the same.

Part 5 · Still

Eyes-closed steadiness practice with a calm score.

Pick a soundscape and a duration. Sit quietly. The soundscape fades when you drift and returns as you settle.

5.1 · Soundscape and duration

Five soundscapes, four durations, no surprises.

Soundscapes: Music (procedural ambient pad, the new free default), Ocean (free), Forest, Rain, and Silence. Durations: 1, 3, 5, and 10 minutes. Free users get Music or Ocean at 1 or 3 minutes; Pro unlocks the rest.

A small explainer card sits above the picker, What you'll do, and the bottom CTA reads Begin Still Session. Picks persist between launches so the same routine is one tap away tomorrow.

Still picker with five soundscape pills and four duration tiles

5.2 · The session itself

One soft breath orb, one timer, one ambient bed.

The session screen is intentionally still, a soft pulsing orb breathes at four counts in, four out. The timer runs monospaced in the center. With AirPods, the soundscape fades when your head drifts beyond the tolerance window and returns as you settle. With audio-only headphones, the soundscape simply plays through.

The breath orb respects iOS Reduce Motion. Tap × at any time to stop early, the recap shows partial credit honest to how much of the planned session you completed.

Mid-Still session with breath orb and monospaced timer

5.3 · The recap

A calm score, a yaw breakdown, and a streak chip.

With AirPods, the recap shows your calm score (0–100), yaw and pitch steadiness percentages, your current streak, and a personal best chip if you crossed one. The score describes the session you just finished, never a clinical state.

When you cross your previous best, the recap celebrates quietly. A lime ring expands once behind the score, a small NEW PERSONAL BEST pill with a sparkle glyph renders below for about a second and a half, then both fade. The existing success haptic still fires. If you have iOS Reduce Motion enabled, the pill still appears but the ring expand is skipped. No streamers, no confetti, no modal dialog. Just a quiet acknowledgement.

Without AirPods, the recap is honest: Still session complete, listening time, soundscape, and a single short sentence. No fake number where there's no measurement.

If HealthKit Mindful Minutes is on, the planned session length is written to Apple Health at the moment the recap appears. If you turned it off, nothing is written.

Still recap with calm score, yaw and pitch breakdown, and streak chip

Part 6 · Motion

Holding the horizon in moving environments.

Five environments, car, plane, screen fatigue, before travel, after travel. Box-breathing pacer in your AirPods. Honest fallback for any audio output.

6.1 · Five environments

The session adapts to where you are.

Car or rideshare: 3 min, free. Quick horizon hold for the commute.
Before travel: 3 min, free. A primer to settle the system before boarding.
Plane, train, or boat: 10 min, Pro. Longer travel-stability session.
Screen or headset fatigue: 5 min, Pro. Head-level reset and slow visual anchoring.
After travel: 5 min, Pro. Settle the body once you've arrived.

Each environment carries its own intro and outro voice line, recorded in the same Shimmer voice as the rest of the app, so a Plane session sounds different from a Car session.

Motion tab listing five environment cards with durations

6.2 · Holding the horizon

The live horizon canvas and the breath pacer.

A faint horizon line crosses the center of the screen. Above it sits the percent of session time spent on horizon. Below it, a soft box-breathing pacer holds your rhythm steady. With Pro and AirPods, gentle haptic nudges fire if you drift out of the tolerance window for too long; voice cues tell you which way to correct (chin up, chin down, head tilting left, head tilting right).

Mid-Motion session with horizon canvas and on-horizon percentage

6.3 · The Motion recap

Honest about what the sensor measured.

The recap leads with the percent of session time spent on horizon and the longest steady run in seconds. Sample count and duration are listed plainly. If the run mode was audio-only or visual-only, no horizon score is shown , only the things the app actually observed.

When your horizon-hold percent crosses your previous best, the same quiet celebration plays as on the Still recap. A lime ring pulses behind the score and a small NEW PERSONAL BEST pill with a sparkle glyph renders below for about a second and a half. Reduce Motion users see the pill without the ring animation.

Motion recap with horizon-hold percentage and longest steady run

Part 7 · Ring

A quieter room for your ears.

Four sound intents, masking, focus tones, wind down, quiet-room support, over a single Sound Studio panel. Works on any headphones.

7.1 · Choose ear calm

Four sound intents, one comfort tool.

Mask the ring: soft sound beds tuned for comfort. Free.
Focus tones: gentle tones and rhythmic pacing for concentration. Pro.
Wind down my ears: low-stimulation evening tracks. Pro.
Quiet room support: for when silence feels too loud. Pro.

Ring is a comfort tool, not a tinnitus treatment. It does not diagnose, evaluate, or cure ringing in the ears. The language inside the app stays in that lane.

Ring tab with four ear-calm intent cards: mask, focus, wind down, quiet room

7.2 · Sound Studio

One panel, three purpose-built widgets.

Below the four intent cards, a single Sound Studio panel holds three controls. Each control is its own widget, shaped to match what it does, instead of three identical text-pill rows.

Intensity is three tiles with a stacked-bar glyph: one bar for Soft, two for Medium, three for Full, so loudness reads as visual mass before you read the label. Timer is four chips with big bold digits, 5, 10, 20 minutes, and a moon glyph for Sleep. Tone is three round color discs that show the actual green tint each pick produces in the live session, with a lime ring and checkmark on the selected one. Selected state across all three controls lands on the same lime fill, so the whole studio reads as one coherent surface.

Picking Sleep reveals one extra line inside the same card, the bed fades over the last 30 seconds so you can drift off without the audio cutting hard. Ring works on any audio output, wired EarPods, generic Bluetooth, AirPods, even the speaker. Motion-capable AirPods are not required and the picker says so.

Part 8 · Settings, privacy, and pricing

What is yours to control.

The Settings hub, the HealthKit Mindful Minutes opt-in, iCloud sync, the safety acknowledgement, and the one-time $4.99 Pro unlock.

8.1 · The Settings hub

Five groups, sparse on purpose.

Tapping the gear in the header opens the Settings sheet. Free users see the Unlock HeadPause Pro hero card at the top with a $4.99 one-time-purchase pill. Pro users see a quieter HeadPause Pro · Active on this Apple ID card. Underneath sit the five groups:

General: Audio & voice (volume, voice speed), Hardware (audio route diagnostics).
Module Preferences: Per-module defaults for Balance, Still, Motion, and Ring. Side preference, default soundscape, default environment, default intent.
Data: Notifications and Health & privacy (the HealthKit toggle).
About: Help & support, legal, version, and the “Show onboarding again” link if you want a refresher.
Debug: Developer-only, hidden in release builds.

Settings hub with Unlock HeadPause Pro hero card showing $4.99 one-time purchase

8.2 · HealthKit Mindful Minutes

Opt-in, single-purpose, write-only.

Inside Data → Health & privacy sit two rows. Run baseline lets you re-record your day-zero stillness reading anytime, useful if you skipped it during onboarding or want a fresh anchor after a tough week. It opens the same 30-second eyes-closed flow described in chapter 2.5, stores the result in your local 14-day rolling baseline, and never leaves your phone.

Below that sits the HealthKit Mindful Minutes toggle. When you flip it on, iOS shows the standard HealthKit sharing prompt. If you grant it, every completed Still session writes its planned duration to Apple Health when you reach the recap. If you deny or turn the toggle off, nothing is written. HeadPause does not read from HealthKit.

8.3 · Notifications

Three toggles, all off by default.

Inside Data → Notifications sit three toggles. Each runs through the standard iOS authorization flow the first time you turn one on, and each can be flipped off independently afterward.

Session reminders: off by default. A daily 8 PM nudge, suppressed automatically if you already completed any session that day. The body reads A 3-minute Still might help your day land.
Streak alerts: on once you grant notification permission. Fires fourteen hours before your rolling streak would lapse, and only if your current streak is at least three days. The body says You're on a 6-day streak. One short session before midnight keeps it.
Weekly summary: off by default. A Monday 9 AM nudge that the digest card on Home is ready to look at. Tapping it deep-links to Home; it never forces a session.

The schedule is conservative on purpose. HeadPause never pings you mid-session, never asks you to rate, never pushes promotional content. If you flip every toggle off, the app never sends a notification again.

Settings notifications panel with three toggles for session reminders, streak alerts, and weekly summary

8.4 · Pricing

One purchase, yours forever.

Free includes the Brandt-Daroff and Gaze Stabilization Balance routines, Still sessions up to 3 minutes with the Music or Ocean soundscape, the Car and Before-travel Motion environments, the Mask Ring intent, and the last 30 days of practice history. Always free, no account required.

Pro: one-time $4.99. Unlocks the full Balance library (Epley, Semont, Half-Somersault, BBQ Roll) with form scoring, longer Still sessions plus the full soundscape library, all five Motion environments with horizon holds, drift hum, and trip telemetry, the full Ring sound studio (masking, focus tones, wind-down beds), complete practice history, and iCloud sync. No subscriptions, no recurring charges.

Pro paywall with feature rows and one-time purchase badge at $4.99

Ready to try it?

HeadPause is live on the App Store for iPhone. If you want to download it, reach the GMX3C team, or read the details on how your data is handled, everything is one click away.

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