Guru: Stories & Meditation

I mean this wholeheartedly, I’m not a jerk on here just trying to tear down an app that still has perks. I rarely even write reviews so for the sake of people who agree to the 7-day trial, which, in my opinion is pretty stingy, and I understand that a lot of apps out there do this, but still, I’m here to reveal my honesty in an effort to warn people—THIS IS A TERRIBLE APP. I don’t just glance around at the App Store now and again. I was in a horrible car accident that just about crushed my entire body and have been cursed to heal in bed for what feels like an eternity. I LIVE in the App Store, trying dozens and dozens and dozens of apps, and primarily through this particular category for the meditations, guided support, AI-generated therapy, breathwork, self-help and affirmations—you name it. And this app, honest to God—is not worth $5/week or $70/year. That’s like, a really really bad dad joke. I mean, if they charged $20/year even, I literally wouldn’t be writing this review. Even though it’s not worth the $20, that’s how much this app MIGHT be worth to someone. More of my honest opinion? This is the basic kind of app you get for free with ads. There is NO WAY they haven’t paid for their reviews!! NO WAY. This app is hardly worth 3 stars! AND THEYRE CHARGING MORE THAN INSIGHT TIMER!!—who btw, offers an insane amount of free content, a 30-DAY TRIAL for Member’s-only content, and is $10 LESS A YEAR. For $5/week you’d imagine you’d be gaining perks neck-in-neck with Insight Timer, the Breethe app, I mean, there’s some fantastic health and fitness apps on the market right now for even less $ Insight Timer has the world’s largest meditation library, over 260,000, more than 17,000 teachers, live events every day, a plethora of guided breathwork classes, courses, challenges, ambient sounds, advanced journaling with milestones, affirmation sessions with access to live retreats! (And yes AI helped me with this, not here to advertise, just compare). What does this app have? Allow me to tell you. First things first, I have to answer a riddle to even get in. Because I got it right I get a 7-day free trial. Okay..well what if I had gotten it wrong? It gives me something like four categories to choose from. I choose meditation. It asks me what kind I want. Again there are four, rather odd choices. I choose “sleep,” thinking I’m going to be led to some options for hypnosis, or affirmations, binaural beats or something to make me sleepy or sleep. Nope! I’m taken to a screen that gives me a challenge with five levels to reach. I have to pass all five levels to hear the spell. One spell. I’m told I have to blow as hard as I can on the phone mic to make a level to make a feather float higher than a line towards the top of the screen—5 times—and if I don’t do it all five times, I have to start the level completely over. Well, I don’t want to do that. I wanted a meditation like you advertised. In fact, I don’t want the spell now either because my expectation’s real low now. So I exit back to main screen. This time I select “Music.” Gives me about eight tunes. On a positive note, all 8 are pleasant and soothing. Bad note, all 8 sound exactly alike with slight variations. OK, I mean, I guess it’s a “perk” but not for five dollars a week. Next I choose an option that says “white noise,” thinking maybe, just maybe it’s got a nice color scheme. I do enjoy some nice pink or brown noise. Nope. Just a very, very gentle version of white noise and that is all folks. This time I choose “Story.” Maybe it has some nice bedtime stories, or talks, or just something. Please just give me something. Anything like what you said you have. Nope. It jumps into a very, very strange and off putting teen drama dragging you out of Guru-land into the Bratz movie. Something about a girl’s boyfriend cheating on her at a party and the story starts out with texts between two girls with the friend texting the protagonist to tell her that her boyfriend is at the party she’s at and all over another girl, so protagonist decides to show up at the party even though she has a cold, then it switches to the boyfriend but he’s really the boyfriend’s twin who made him wear a “Single AF” shirt so that the gf (protagonist) would hear about it from a friend and they’d break up because he didn’t want to do it in person. And then it ends. I’m sorry…..but what just happened. Why did I actually commit to the five minutes it took to finish whatever the hell this was. ..and guess what? There are no other stories. And where is the AI,? I don’t see any AI anywhere, I couldn’t find one. I can’t ask this guru any questions in fact every time I tap the screen it just says exit and I’m very confused as to how I get back to the first screen. It’s just not …a good app. If I had accidentally subscribed—because that’s the only way I would’ve actually purchased a subscription for this app—I am 100% sure if I filed a dispute I would win! This app advertises as something completely different and better than it is. It’s not! There are no meditations, there are no real stories, there is no AI model you can ask your questions from, yes, you can set a timer to wake up to a guru-licous melody of some sort (didn’t bother), but that is NOT worth $70 a year. None of it is. And it’s especially not worth $10 more a year than Insight Timer, a real bang for your buck. Sorry, not sorry.

I really liked the game and the stories were nice and all but to pay $5 each each all to hear and meditate ? Seriously? There’s better apps out there that don’t require much just to be even funner so I honestly love this app but it’s just not it sometimes.

So I have trouble sleeping even though I’m only 10. I see like scary faces sometimes and I listened to this app for like 20 minutes and it helped so much. People are saying this app is bad but it is genuinely good I don’t know what they’re talking about. Thank you Guru for helping me sleep (btw this is my first review on an app)