Camaïeu

A breath pacer and focus timer you make yours.

Pick a composition, choose your colors, and turn it into the thing you need: a focus timer for the next twenty minutes, or a pacer that moves as you breathe. Reshuffle it, recolor it, reframe it, whenever it stops fitting. Quiet, ad-free, and yours.

Download on the App Store

Shuffle it

Every composition grows from a seed — drifting cells, meshing gears, or rolling waves. A tap deals a new one: sometimes a single breathing form, sometimes a dense little world, never an accident. Shuffle until you find the shape you want your timer or your breathing pace to live on.

Color it

Every composition starts in shades of grey. You bring the color. Pick a hue and a mood: deep single-color ink, glowing color on a near-dark field, two hues of your own, or pure greyscale. Recolor your timer or your breathing pace under your finger, in light mode or dark.

Breathe, or focus

Give your composition a job: a breathing pacer that moves it as you inhale, hold and exhale, or a focus timer you place right on top of it. Or just leave it running, ambient, like a lava lamp with taste. Your colors, your composition, your call.

Never the same timer twice

Camaïeu isn't a stock countdown or a generic breathing app — you build the thing you're going to stare at. Pick a family of shapes, shuffle the composition, choose the colors, then decide what it does: pace your breath or count down your focus. Change your mind next week and reshuffle it into something else. Everything on screen is drawn live on your iPhone, from shapes designed and tuned by hand, so whatever you land on looks deliberate.

Breathe with it, focus with it

The breath pacer isn't laid over the composition, it sets its pace: the shapes move as you inhale and exhale, and pause when you hold, while a ring swells and settles with each breath and shows where you are in the cycle. Choose a pattern (box breathing, relaxing 4-7-8, coherent breathing) or set your own timing. For work, start a focus timer instead, and place it on the composition you built: a tiny countdown beside one big drifting cell, or bold numerals over a field of little gears, in the colors you chose. It's the nicest timer you'll ever look at, because you made it that way.

A look you can keep — and share

Once you've built the timer or the breathing pace you want, keep it. A favorite captures the whole look — the shapes, the seed, your colors, even how you framed it — and brings it back exactly, ready to breathe or focus with again. Every look also has a short code you can copy and send: a friend pastes it into their own Camaïeu and gets your exact composition, colors included. No account, no uploads: the code is the picture.

Carry it with you

Export the exact frame on your screen as a still, or as a short video that loops seamlessly for sharing the motion itself — your composition and colors, off the timer and out in the world. What you see is what you carry.

Free to fall for it

Camaïeu is ad-free, and the free version is a fully working breath pacer and focus timer: one complete shape family with endless variation, colors and moods to build your composition from, every breathing pattern and every timer length, and still export. If you want more to build with — every shape family, the full set of colors, all the moods, your favorite looks saved and shared, motion carried out as video — a small monthly or yearly subscription opens the rest of the box.

Frequently asked

What do I actually do with it?
Open it and watch. Tap shuffle for a new picture, pick a color and a mood, pinch and drag to frame it. When you want it to do a job, give it one: start a focus timer, or breathe with it.
What happens when I start a focus session?
Choose 5, 10 or 20 minutes. A countdown appears on the picture and the shapes keep moving while you work. No notifications, no sounds, the screen stays on — when the time is up, it's up. You decide where the countdown sits and how big it is: tiny in a corner, or bold across half the screen.
How does breathing mode work?
The picture keeps your pace. Pick a pattern (box breathing 4-4-4-4, relaxing 4-7-8, coherent 5-5) or drag the curve to set your own inhale, hold and exhale times. The shapes move as you inhale and exhale and pause while you hold, and a small ring swells and settles with each breath to show you where you are in the cycle.
Can I keep a picture I like?
Yes. Tap the heart to save it to your favorites, or share it as a short code — anyone with the app can paste the code and see exactly the same picture, colors and framing included. You can also export a still image or a short looping video to Photos.
What does “camaïeu” mean?
A camaïeu is a painting technique: a whole picture built from tonal variations of a single hue. That's how the app works, too — every shape is drawn in shades of grey, and the color you choose is applied on top.
Is this a wallpaper app?
No — the picture is rendered live on your iPhone, and the motion is the point: think of it as something between a lava lamp and a moving painting. You can export a still and use it as a wallpaper, but the app is for watching.
Are the pictures AI-generated?
No. Every shape family is designed and tuned by hand. The app only varies what has been designed, so every picture looks intended.
Is it free?
It's free to try properly and ad-free forever. The free version is fully functional: a complete shape family with endless variation, a set of colors and two moods, every timer and breathing mode, and still export. A subscription adds the other shape families, all colors and moods, saving favorites, and video export.
Does it need an account or an internet connection?
No account, no sign-up, no backend. Pictures are generated and rendered entirely on your iPhone.

Privacy

Everything happens on your iPhone. Pictures are generated and rendered on the device, and your favorites, settings and breathing patterns stay there: no account, no sign-up, no ads. The optional subscription goes through Apple and RevenueCat; anonymous usage statistics go through TelemetryDeck. The only permission the app asks for is adding images to your Photos library when you export. Full details in the Privacy Policy.

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