Lucid Dreaming. There’s an app for that!

Brian Gilan
2 min readAug 26, 2022

Lucid dreaming is difficult to access for many. Learning mental techniques (e.g. MILD, WBTB, reality checks) from books, and applying well-timed sensory stimulation from devices can help. Mobile apps for lucid dreaming can do both — and more.

Lucid dreaming? There’s an app for that.

That was the topic during the Tech for Dreaming event last week. We were joined by three people at the forefront of creating these types of mobile apps for lucid dreaming:

  • Lucidly is an app that is connected to the Apple Watch and uses real-time REM detection algorithms to enable targeted timing of vibrations when it thinks the user is dreaming.
  • WorldWithin is an app that makes lucid dreaming more accessible by providing education, tools (e.g. digital dream journal, automated reality checks, meditations and other content), and habit-building features.
  • Lucid Experiment is an app created by Northwestern University to better scale their efforts to discover effective stimulation techniques to induce lucid dreams. They combine the use of an Android app and a Fitbit device to do real-time REM detection and apply different lucidity cues during REM sleep.

The field of mobile apps applied to making lucid dreaming more accessible is young and evolving. What problems could these apps solve for you? What’s your dream feature?

Join us over in the Tech for Dreaming Discord server to discuss this and more!

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Brian Gilan

Interests: digital health, wearables, sleep & dreams; upgrading health, intelligence, and consciousness; understanding the nature of reality.