1 Stir it
Trace a finger across the glass and the glitter swirls after it in a long, lazy trail. It's the good kind of pointless — a proper sensory fidget, one thumb, no thinking required.
Free on iPhone and Android
Glitter Jar — a calm sensory glitter jar for iPhone and Android
A sensory toy that lives in your pocket: a glass jar full of glitter you can stir with a fingertip or slosh with a real shake of your phone. Then comes the good part — be still. The flecks drift, sparkle and settle, and the jar quietly rewards you.
- No ads, ever
- No accounts
- No tracking
- Nothing locked
Half a minute of the real thing. Shake it, settle it, choose a charm — that’s the whole app.
33charms
9colors
2moods
∞collecting
0ads
0accounts
0permissions
$0to play
The whole idea
Stillness is the only currency
Most calming apps hand you a streak to protect and a bar to fill. Glitter Jar doesn't. There is nothing to fail, and nothing that expires while you're away.
Progress comes from one thing: glitter that you disturbed coming back to rest. Stir the jar, shake it, then stop touching it — and every fleck that drifts down and settles contributes.
When enough has settled, a charm surfaces and offers you a choice of three. It is the opposite of a grind — you're rewarded for putting the phone down and watching.
- No score
- No timer
- No streaks
- No daily login
- No energy bar
- No leaderboard
A fidget you can do with one thumb
Shake it up. Then be still.
Keep it by your side for a calm-down moment, a focus break, or the ten minutes before sleep when your hands still want a job.
2 Shake it
Give the phone a real shake and the whole jar sloshes — it reads your actual motion. Tilt it and gravity tilts with you, so the glitter falls toward whichever way is genuinely down.
3 Be still
Now watch. Thousands of flecks drift, tumble, twinkle and pile up along the bottom in a slow snowfall.
4 Choose one
Something settles out of the glitter and offers you three charms. Take the one you like — duplicates and all, it goes in your collection. Then the glitter keeps falling.
33 illustrated jewel-enamel charms, common through rare — and the collection is said to hold a secret past that.
The tray
33 charms to collect
Little enamel-and-metallic pendants that sink through the glitter, sway on the way down, and rest on the bottom of the jar — where you can pick them up and toss them around again. Collecting never ends.
Common
12 charms · the Fan is yours from the very first launch
Uncommon
13 charms
Rare
8 charms · and the tray isn’t quite the whole story
Nine hand-tuned glitters
Every color is a different mood
Nine thoughtful mixes, each blended from six flecks so the jar reads as one thing from across a room and dissolves into confetti up close. Three are yours from the first launch. The rest arrive as you rack up quiet.
Galaxy
Lilac, periwinkle and rose — the signature jar.
yours from the startSapphire
Deep blues with a turquoise glint running through.
yours from the startRainbow
All six flecks, all different. Pure confetti.
yours from the startMidnight
Indigo and plum, barely lit. Made for the dark.
earned by being stillSunset
Coral, apricot and hot pink, falling like embers.
earned by being stillDragonfruit
Magenta and jade, exactly like the fruit.
earned by being stillGarnet
Blood red down to near-black, with a pink flash.
earned by being stillAurora
Mint and violet — northern lights in a jar.
earned by being stillNebula
Cyan, violet and magenta. The deep-space one.
earned by being stillTwo skins, two whole art sets
A jar for night, and one for day
Each mood swaps the background, the glass, the panels, the icons and the wordmark for art drawn specifically for it.
Midnight
Indigo washed with stars. Glitter glows against black water; charms catch the light like they're lit from inside.
Daylight
Blush and pale lavender, with clear water and a glass jar that reads like a real one on a sunny shelf.
And then there's zen mode. One tap and everything goes — the wordmark, the swatches, the tray, the settings — until the jar fills the screen edge to edge and there is nothing on your phone but glitter falling. It still counts your stillness while you're in there.
Tune it to your kind of calm
Your jar, your settings
Sensory needs aren't one-size-fits-all. Six knobs let you take the jar from a sparse, slow drift to a full-blown blizzard — and back again — in a couple of taps.
Amount
From a handful of flecks drifting in a big empty jar to thousands of them filling it. Turn it up for a snow globe; turn it down when you want to follow one speck all the way down.
Size
Fine dust or chunky confetti. Big flakes fall faster and catch more light; small ones hang in the water like they're suspended in glass.
Water
Darken the water from clear glass to deep night. The darker it gets, the more the glitter glows — and the slower and dreamier the whole fall feels.
Twinkle
How much the flecks sparkle as they tumble. Crank it for a shimmer that keeps catching your eye, or switch it off entirely if flashing is too much.
Theme
Midnight or daylight, switched instantly. Both are complete looks with their own art — pick whichever one your eyes want right now.
Music
A soft harp loop drifts under the glitter, and it's one tap to silence. No sound effects at all — nothing chimes, dings or congratulates you.
Calm by construction
Completely free.
A relaxation app full of ads isn't a relaxation app. This one has no way to monetize you at all — there is no store, no billing code, and no network code to phone anything home with.
Glitter Jar
$0free
- The entire app — every color, every charm, every setting, from the first launch
- 33 charms and 9 glitter colors, unlocked by stillness alone
- Both moods, midnight and daylight, with their own complete art
- Zen mode — the jar, edge to edge, and nothing else
- Gentle harp music, bundled in the app, off in one tap
- Collecting that never ends
- Your jar and your collection stay on your device; nothing is ever sent to us
What it doesn’t do
Not toggles you have to find in a menu — things the app simply cannot do.
- No ads. None, anywhere, not even a "watch a video to unlock" one
- No subscription and no currency — nothing meters how long you can stay, and nothing is locked behind a payment
- No accounts and no sign-in — there's nobody to be
- No notifications. It will never ping you to come back
- No tracking and no analytics — no advertising ID, no profile, nothing following you between apps
- No streaks to lose if you don't open it for a month
Straight answers
FAQ
Is this a game?
Not really. There's no score, no timer, no way to win and no way to lose — it's a sensory toy with a collection attached. The charms exist to give the calm a small shape, not to be a task list.
Does it need internet?
No. Every fleck is simulated on your phone, the music ships inside the app, and your jar never leaves your device — we run no servers for it to talk to. The one exception is the optional tip jar: if you choose to leave a tip, your phone talks to the App Store or Google Play to handle it, exactly as it would for any other purchase. Ignore the tip jar and the app never reaches the network at all.
How long until something unlocks?
The first charms come quickly — a couple of minutes of settled glitter each, on average. From there the gaps ease out to about seven minutes of stillness per unlock and stay there for good. Nothing is randomized at you and no unlock can be bought or hurried: it's the same unhurried pace for everybody.
And it never runs out. Once you've been through the milestones, charms keep offering themselves forever, duplicates included.
Is it really free? What's the catch?
There isn't one. The app is free, nothing is locked behind a payment, there's no subscription and nothing expires — every charm and every color unlocks just by using it. There is one optional thing, tucked in the settings menu: a tip jar, if you ever feel like saying thank you. Tipping drops a little keepsake coin in your jar and changes nothing else. It's a small app made by a solo dev because the world could use more calm things that don't want anything from you.
Is it good for anxiety, focus, or as a stim toy?
It can be used that way — as a calm-down jar, a fidget between meetings, something to hold at bedtime, or a wind-down for a kid who needs a minute. It's a toy, not a treatment, and it makes no medical claims. It just gives your hands and eyes something quiet and slow to do.
Does shaking really work?
Yes — it reads your phone's motion sensor, so a real shake sloshes the whole jar and a tilt aims gravity wherever you point it. If you'd rather not wave your phone around, a fingertip on the glass does the same job.
What does it run on?
iPhone and iPad on iOS 15 and up, and Android 7.0 and up — portrait, one hand. Built in Godot, light on the battery, and everything it needs — art, music, physics — ships inside the download. In English.
What happens to my collection?
It lives in the app's own private storage on your device, and nothing is ever sent to us — we operate no servers and have no way to see it. Your phone's own backup can include the app, the same as most apps on it, which is why your jar may reappear when you set up a new device: that's Android's backup or Apple's iCloud, held in your account, not ours. Either can be switched off in your phone's settings if you'd rather it didn't.
Shake it up. Then be still.
Free · 33 charms · 9 colors · no ads, no accounts, no notifications
Questions, trouble, or something to say? Write to anna@groundmass.net — a real person reads every one.
Made by a solo dev who needed one of these, with love ♥