LIST
Best dream apps
Dream apps do one of two jobs. Catch what you dreamed before it fades, or train you to realize you are dreaming while it happens. A third thing exists now, which is staging a dream-like scene at the moment you wake up.
For catching dreams
Speed decides everything here, because the memory goes while you are deciding whether to write it down.
Lucidity is a dream journal and lucid dreaming tool built around capturing dreams fast, with tags, moods and a privacy-minded design. On iPhone.
Awoken is the Android option: journal with optional pin protection, reality check reminders, and audio cues meant to trigger lucidity. Free.
For lucid dreaming
Oniri carries the named techniques, WILD, MILD, SSILD, plus audio cues with custom sounds, on both stores, with a subscription for premium features.
Lucid dreaming takes weeks of practice with any of these.
The outlier: staging one instead of recording one
Alarmesque is an alarm. It writes a scene each morning and plays it as the ring, built the way dreams are built: first person, already in progress, a place before an explanation, stakes that only make sense from inside. Your name is in it and you choose the voice.
It does not track sleep, log dreams or induce lucidity. It works on the minute you wake up. Worth knowing if you came here because the interesting part of dreaming is the experience rather than the record of it.
Which to pick
- Remember more dreams: Lucidity on iPhone, Awoken on Android.
- Learn to go lucid: Oniri, and patience.
- Want the experience without the practice: Alarmesque.