A free tool from Sophie's Bureau
Sound for the work in front of you.
Pick a session for the kind of work you're about to do, press Start and get on with it. The sound plays while you work: the first few minutes settle you as you open your files, then a steady tone sits underneath until you're done. No extra break needed.
Headphones give you binaural beats, a slightly different tone in each ear.
Speakers switch to pulsed tones, which work without headphones.
No account, no tracking of your sessions. Keep the volume low enough to forget about.
Focus timer
Work in rounds, rest between them.
A soft chime marks each change, so you can stop watching the clock. Short breaks restore energy, so take them away from the screen.
Office mode
For speakers and shared rooms.
No tones at all, only noise and recorded natural sound. It masks chatter, evens out a room and plays properly through laptop speakers, so it suits open-plan days, co-working desks and the hour before a call.
Your log
Hours you protected.
Every session, timer round and office stretch over a minute long is logged here. A day counts towards your streak once it reaches ten minutes.
Last fourteen days
Recent
The evidence
What the research says, and how Deep Hours uses it.
Deep Hours is built on published studies rather than big promises. Each setting is here for a reason, and the sources are listed at the end so you can read them yourself.
| Setting | Used in | Why it's here |
|---|---|---|
| Beta 16 Hz | Morning start, Deep work, Admin block, Timer | More targets caught, fewer errors and better mood in a controlled vigilance study |
| High beta 25 Hz | Long analysis, Timer | Close to the faster beta beat in the same study |
| Alpha 10 Hz | Most lead-ins, Writing and thinking, Quick reset, Meditation | Relaxed, steady attention; part of the research pooled in the 2019 meta-analysis |
| Schumann 7.83 Hz | Settling stretches, Grounding break, Meditation | A low, steady beat for the settling minutes at the start of a session |
| SMR 14 Hz | Quick reset | The low end of beta, alert without being busy, to bring you back up after a reset |
| Theta 6 Hz | Meditation, End-of-day shutdown | Meditators most often show more alpha and theta than at rest, in a 2015 review of 56 EEG studies |
| 40 Hz gamma | Hard problem | A growing area of research into concentration and memory |
| Pink and white noise | Office mode, Timer | Better task performance for people who find focus hard |
| Short breaks | Timer | More energy and less fatigue across 22 studies |
Binaural beats
A 2019 meta-analysis pooled 22 studies and found a medium, consistent effect of binaural beats on cognition and anxiety, and on how much pain people reported. Two of its details shaped this app. Listening before a task, or before and during it, did better than listening only during it, which is why most sessions open with a settling stretch that plays while you get started. Longer exposure also helped, so the sessions run for real working lengths instead of five-minute samples.
Listening before you start, as well as during, gave the best results.
Researchers are still working out how the beats have their effect. A 2023 review of 14 EEG studies found the brain's measured response varied from study to study, with methods too different to compare cleanly, and called for more standardised research. The results on focus and mood in the meta-analysis don't depend on settling that question.
The Schumann resonance
At 7.83 Hz, the Schumann resonance is the lowest natural resonance of the space between the Earth's surface and the ionosphere, kept ringing by lightning around the world. The physicist Winfried Otto Schumann predicted it in 1952. It sits at the top of the theta band, just below alpha, and its low, even beat suits the settling minutes that open most sessions, while you get going, and the Grounding break.
Why beta for focus
The clearest single result comes from a 1998 study in which 29 people did a 30-minute vigilance task three times, listening to pink noise with beats mixed in. With beta beats at 16 and 24 Hz they caught more targets, raised fewer false alarms and reported less negative mood than with theta and delta beats. The focus stretches in Deep work and Admin block use 16 Hz with a noise bed for that reason, and Long analysis uses 25 Hz, close to the faster of the two.
Meditation
A 2015 systematic review of 56 EEG studies of mindfulness, with 1,715 people between them, found meditation most often linked with more alpha and theta activity than resting with the eyes closed, though not every study reported it. The Meditation session rests in 6 Hz theta for that reason, then returns to alpha for two minutes so you go back to work clear-headed rather than drowsy. It is offered as a steady rhythm to sit with: the review describes what the brain tends to do in meditation, not what a beat can make it do.
Noise on its own
A 2024 meta-analysis of 13 studies found that white and pink noise improved task performance for people with ADHD or attention difficulties. For others the results were mixed, which is why office mode lets you choose noise, natural sound or both, and set each one's level.
Breaks
A 2022 meta-analysis of 22 studies found that breaks of ten minutes or less raised energy and reduced fatigue, and that longer breaks helped most with creative and clerical work. No study names one perfect interval, so the timer offers 25/5, 50/10 and 90/20 and lets you set your own.
Sources
- Garcia-Argibay, M., Santed, M. A. and Reales, J. M. (2019). Efficacy of binaural auditory beats in cognition, anxiety, and pain perception: a meta-analysis. Psychological Research, 83(2), 357–372. PubMed
- Ingendoh, R. M., Posny, E. S. and Heine, A. (2023). Binaural beats to entrain the brain? A systematic review of the effects of binaural beat stimulation on brain oscillatory activity. PLOS ONE, 18(5). PMC
- Lane, J. D., Kasian, S. J., Owens, J. E. and Marsh, G. R. (1998). Binaural auditory beats affect vigilance performance and mood. Physiology & Behavior, 63(2), 249–252. PubMed
- Lomas, T., Ivtzan, I. and Fu, C. H. Y. (2015). A systematic review of the neurophysiology of mindfulness on EEG oscillations. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 57, 401–410. UEL repository
- Nigg, J. T., Bruton, A., Kozlowski, M. B., Johnstone, J. M. and Karalunas, S. L. (2024). Systematic review and meta-analysis: do white noise or pink noise help with task performance in youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or with elevated attention problems? Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. PMC
- Albulescu, P., Macsinga, I., Rusu, A., Sulea, C., Bodnaru, A. and Tulbure, B. T. (2022). "Give me a break!" A systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of micro-breaks for increasing well-being and performance. PLOS ONE, 17(8). PMC