Breathing Exercise
Follow the circle: breathe in as it grows, hold, breathe out as it shrinks.
Ready
16 seconds a breath · 3.8 breaths a minute
Four equal sides: in, hold, out, hold.
Seconds. Set a hold to 0 to skip it.
This is a breathing pacer: a circle that grows while you breathe in, stays full while you hold, and shrinks while you breathe out. You match your breath to it, so you never have to count. Each change of phase can ring a soft bell, pitched higher for breathing in and lower for breathing out, so once you know the pattern you can follow it with your eyes closed.
A breath here has four parts: breathing in, holding with full lungs, breathing out, and holding with empty lungs. Every pattern is those four numbers, in seconds, and either hold can be zero. The presets are the patterns people most often ask for by name.
Box breathing is 4 · 4 · 4 · 4 — four equal sides of a square, sixteen seconds a breath, or 3.75 breaths a minute. It is easy to remember and easy to keep, which is most of its appeal.
4-7-8 is breathe in for 4, hold for 7, breathe out for 8, with no hold afterwards. A breath takes 19 seconds, so about 3.2 breaths a minute, and four breaths — a common way to do it — take 76 seconds. The long hold and the exhale twice as long as the inhale are what make it feel different from box breathing.
Coherent breathing is 5.5 seconds in and 5.5 seconds out with no holds: eleven seconds a breath, about 5.5 breaths a minute. Long exhale is 4 in and 6 out, six breaths a minute, for anyone who finds holding uncomfortable.
To make your own, type the four numbers. They take half seconds, and a box that is out of range is marked and ignored until it is fixed, so a half-typed number never interrupts a session. Changing the pattern while it runs starts again from the top of a breath.
The address bar always describes the pattern on screen — #pattern=4-7-8 for a preset,
all four numbers for anything else — so you can bookmark a pattern or send it to someone. Whether the
bell is on is remembered on this device and is not part of the link.
The bells are scheduled a few seconds ahead on the audio hardware's own clock, so a busy page cannot make one late. If your device is set to reduce motion, the circle stays still and the words and the countdown carry the pace instead.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account, and it works offline once the page has loaded. It is a pacer, not medical advice: if you feel dizzy or short of breath, stop and breathe normally, and choose shorter holds next time.
Link to this tool with values filled in
Everything after the # stays in your browser — it is never sent to a server — so a
link like this opens the tool ready to go without the values travelling anywhere but the address
bar:
https://crunchify.net/tools/breathing-exercise#pattern=4-7-8
Join the settings with &, and percent-encode each value so that spaces,
newlines and any #, &, = or % inside one
do not break the link. Leave a setting out to accept its default. If a setting is not recognised,
the page says so rather than quietly ignoring it.
pattern(alsopresetortechnique) — box, 4-7-8, coherent or long-exhale. A named pattern, as seconds in · hold · out · hold: `box` (4 · 4 · 4 · 4), `4-7-8` (4 · 7 · 8 · 0), `coherent` (5.5 · 0 · 5.5 · 0), `long-exhale` (4 · 0 · 6 · 0). Box breathing when omitted.inhale(alsoin) — a whole number from 1 to 20. Seconds breathing in, 1–20. Replaces the pattern's.hold(alsoholdin) — a whole number from 0 to 20. Seconds holding with full lungs, 0–20; 0 skips it. Replaces the pattern's.exhale(alsoout) — a whole number from 1 to 20. Seconds breathing out, 1–20. Replaces the pattern's.pause(alsoholdoutorrest) — a whole number from 0 to 20. Seconds holding with empty lungs, 0–20; 0 skips it. Replaces the pattern's.
How do I do box breathing?
Choose Box and press Start. Breathe in through your nose while the circle grows for four seconds, hold for four while it stays full, breathe out for four while it shrinks, and hold for four while it stays small. Then repeat. Each breath takes sixteen seconds.
What is the 4-7-8 breathing pattern?
Breathe in for four seconds, hold for seven, and breathe out for eight, then begin the next breath straight away. One breath takes nineteen seconds. It is often done for four breaths at a time, which takes a little over a minute.
Can I use it with my eyes closed?
Yes. Leave the bell on: it rings at the start of every phase, a higher note for breathing in, a lower one for breathing out, and a middle one for each hold. A screen reader also announces each phase.
Can I set my own timings?
Yes. Type the number of seconds for each of the four phases. Breathing in and out must each take at least one second; either hold can be zero to skip it, and every phase can be up to twenty seconds. Half seconds are allowed.
Does it keep going when I switch tabs?
So you can follow the bell with another tab or app in front. The bells are queued a few seconds ahead, which carries them through the short pauses a browser puts on a background tab. A phone that suspends the page altogether, or a tab left in the background for many minutes, will stop them — keep the page open on screen for a long session.