Oniri: The best dream app on iOS
Looking for a fun way to keep a dream journal? Want to use Reality checks, Wake back to bed, and other techniques to have lucid dreams? Oniri is the most complete app for lucid dreams, dream journaling, and dream interpretation.
The following review of Oniri is written by the developer, Jean-Baptiste Beau.
Downloads: 200,000
Average rating: 4.6 stars (5k ratings)
Price: Free + Premium Version
There are very few apps that target dreams as a whole, offering features for lucid dreaming but also for dream analysis and interpretation. Oniri is one of them. Though it recently changed its name, Oniri is one of the oldest dream apps on iOS. It was previously called “Capture” and was released in 2015.
Dream Journal: The most complete one out there
The greatest strength of Oniri lies in its dream journal. Between all the dream apps, it has the most complete interface for writing your dreams. Here’s a small list of things you can write down about your dream:
- Story: A story and a title + voice recording (!)
- Content: Emotions, Characters, Places, Themes, Actions, etc…
- Illustration: Images (!)
- Variables: Type, Rating, Dream length, Sleep quality, Lucid or not, Vividness, etc…
- Context: Real-life context, Recurrent dream
The variety of information you can record and the options to add images and record vocal notes are really what makes this dream journaling app different from the rest. Try it out and see for yourself!
Reality Checks
How could a dream app not include Reality Checks, the most popular lucid dreaming technique! Oniri lets you set reminders throughout the day to help you build the practice of performing reality checks. You can choose an interval between reminders, or choose “random frequency” to make reminders pop up randomly. You can also choose a time window for the reminders, and set a custom message for the notification.
Audio Cues
Oniri lets you set audio cues to ring during the night. They are setup to ring while you are in REM sleep, where you have most chances to be dreaming. The goal of those cues is to be incorporated in your dream to make you realize you are dreaming and thus trigger lucidity!
While you can select sounds and musics, this technique works great when you record your own voice to play as a cue. Many lucid dreamers reported that hearing themselves in their dreams helped them to become lucid. Oniri is one of the only app to let you record your voice to play it as a cue, which makes it the best tool for this technique.
Wake Back to Bed
Oniri’s lucid dreaming toolset includes a feature to set an alarm for the WBTB technique. In addition to the regular WBTB, Oniri helps you with some variations of this technique, such as the RAUSIS or LOVE techniques. You can choose when you want the alarm to ring, and what sound to use, just like any other alarm app.
Other techniques, Audio guides, and more
In addition to the 3 techniques above, Oniri helps you with many more lucid dreaming techniques, like WILD, MILD, SSILD, and much more. There are many sounds to play, and audio guides with oral instructions to help you perform wake induced techniques.
Dream Analysis
While many apps focus only on lucid dreams, Oniri also features an awesome Dream Analysis section to help you interpret and understand your dreams. I know it’s not the main point here, but it was worth pointing out.
Conclusion
All in all, Oniri is probably the most complete app regarding dreams. There are many more features that were not covered here. Your dreams are synchronized on the cloud so you don’t lose them, you can lock the app with a code, you can export your journal as a PDF, etc…
AFAIK, it’s the most downloaded dream app on the iOS AppStore, and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive (4.6 star average with 5k ratings). It’s not available on Android yet, but it’s coming soon —you can register here to be informed when it’s released.
You should form your own opinion so try out different dream journal apps and see what works best for you!
~ Sweet dreams
