Reading your session report
What every line in the report means, and what to do about a measurement that came out low.
8 min read
The screen that arrives when a session ends has a score at the top and a few sentences under it. Tap Detailed report and the real information opens up. Let's go through it in order.
The score at the top
Out of a hundred. A weighted average of several separate measurements; which ones count depends on the technique.
This number does not measure whether your breathing was "correct". The only thing it measures is how closely you followed the pace on screen. It is perfectly possible to get a low score and feel very good, and the other way round.
If you did the session without the microphone, no score is worked out.
The measurements
Length. How long you did and how long you planned. If you stopped early, it shows here.
Cycles. How many full cycles you completed.
Exhales heard. Something like "3 (target 4, on time 3)". The first number is how many exhales were heard, the second how many were expected, the third how many of those came at the right time.
If the exhales heard are fewer than the target there are two possible reasons: either you really did miss a cycle, or your exhale was too quiet to be heard. To tell them apart, look at the technical lines below.
Inhales heard. The inhale is far quieter than the exhale, and not hearing it is normal. Its share of the score is small.
Holds. In techniques with a hold phase, in how many cycles no air escaped. When there is a leak, the reason is usually trying to lock the hold shut.
Cycle restarts. How many times you restarted the cycle during the session.
The technical lines
These appear in full on the Advanced interface.
Inhale level. How many decibels your inhale rose above your own silence. Close to zero means the inhale wasn't heard at all.
Exhale peak level. The highest point of your exhale and the room's noise floor. Something like "20 dB above the floor (floor -66 dBFS)".
This is the most useful line. If the difference is under 10 dB, your exhale is staying too quiet to be heard: bring the device closer. If the difference is over 40 dB, you are forcing the breath: let it go, don't push.
Variation within the exhale. How much the sound moved during the exhale. A small number means a steady exhale; a large one means a broken or rasping exhale.
The room was re-measured. The noise floor is re-measured during the session. If it shifted clearly over the session, for example because an air conditioner came on partway through, this line shows the floor measured at the start and at the end.
The components
The measurements that make up the score, each out of a hundred. Looking at which one is low tells you what to work on.
If rhythm match is low, your exhales start late or early against the circle. The fix: wait for the moment the circle begins to shrink, and don't try to count.
If your exhales start late or early by the same amount every cycle, a line under Measurements tells you so, something like "Your exhales started on average 1.4 sec after the target". Your rhythm itself is fine, there is just a steady time gap between you and the circle. Try breathing out as soon as the circle starts to shrink.
If exhales heard is low, either you missed some cycles or your exhale isn't being heard.
If exhale length is low, your exhale is shorter or longer than the target. The most common cause is emptying too fast at the start: give less in the first second and spread the rest to the end.
If exhale smoothness is low, the sound is coming out in bursts. Let the breath go in one piece.
If breath volume is low, you are breathing out either too quietly or too loudly. The peak level line above tells you which.
If completion is low, you didn't finish the session. Pick a shorter length next time.
There are three techniques where sound is part of the technique, and they have one more component: Hum in Humming Bee Breath, Ocean sound in Ocean Breath, Hiss in Cooling Breath. This component measures the technique's own sound and carries a large share of the score. An ordinary breath blown out or let out loudly doesn't count as a hum or as ocean sound. If it's low, try to keep the sound even from start to finish.
Session parts
In sessions longer than two minutes, Detailed report has a Session parts section. The session is split into a few parts, and each part is scored separately from its own measurements.
If there is a clear difference between the parts, a short sentence appears at the top, such as "Your rhythm settled early, then came apart toward the end." or "In the last part your exhales got shorter."
The score at the top isn't the average of the parts. It is worked out from the whole session. The parts are there so you can see what happened where in the session.
On the Advanced interface each part's values also appear in the technical lines: the part's score, rhythm match, the number of exhales heard, the average exhale length and, in techniques with holds, the number of clean holds.
The parts don't appear on the Simple interface.
The sound level
On the Advanced interface there is a chart under the components: the sound level the microphone heard through the session.
Two dashed lines run across it. The lower one is the room's noise floor, the upper one is the threshold a sound has to cross to count as an exhale. The peaks are your breaths: every peak above the threshold is an exhale the report heard.
The bands behind the line show what happened where. The strong bands are the detected exhales, the faint ones the inhale windows, and the thin vertical lines mark the moments the circle started to shrink. Peaks sitting on their bands mean you followed the rhythm; peaks shifted to the right mean you were late.
This is the place to look when you wonder where a number came from. "Exhales heard 3 (target 4)" doesn't tell you which cycle went missing. The chart does.
The line is not sound: the app keeps no audio file, all it has is the levels it measured. They stay on your device and never go into anonymous sharing.
Heart rate
If you did a shared session with Apple Watch, the report has heart rate lines: your average, and the heart rate you started and ended with.
On the Advanced interface, Detailed report also has a heart rate chart: your heart rate through the session, with the session's phases as coloured bands behind it. That way you can see in which phase your heart rate rose and fell. Your lowest and highest heart rate are marked on the chart too.
If the connection to the watch dropped mid-session, that moment is marked on the chart. There is no heart rate from there on.
The buttons on the report screen
The session is saved the moment the report opens. Finish takes you back to the home screen.
Again starts the same technique for the same length straight away, with no trip through the technique picker.
A finished session also has a share icon. It makes a card with the technique’s name, the length, the score if it was measured and your streak, and you send it wherever you like through your device’s share menu. The card carries no name or anything else that identifies you.
Every now and then a short feedback card follows the report: you rate the session out of ten and write a line or two if you feel like it. It can be skipped, and what gets sent is spelled out in the sharing article.
The suggestions
The sentences at the bottom of the report come from the measurements; they aren't random. If the same problem appears in several sessions in a row, it is worth working on.
If you paused the session several times, a separate note about that appears too.
What you see on the Simple interface
If your interface level is Simple, the report shrinks to a single sentence. To see every measurement, set Interface to Standard or Advanced in Settings.