Hoverophone: Air Theremin
Hand-Played Synth & Drone Pad
Free · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Hoverophone is a theremin you play in the air with your hands. Point the front camera at your hands: raise or lower a hand to change pitch, pinch your thumb and finger to set the volume. Continuous, expressive and completely touch-free, with no glass to tap and no controller to hold.
And it actually makes sound. Most theremin apps are touch instruments you drag a finger across a screen. Hoverophone tracks your real hands in the air and responds the instant you move, so the best theremin app on your iPhone or iPad is the one you never touch.
Under the hood it is a proper continuous synth: band-limited sine, triangle, saw and square voices with drive, ring modulation and stereo width. Sweep slow ambient drone pads, or snap out sharp swoops, the eerie space-age sound made famous in film and television.
Prefer your notes in tune? Switch on the in-air note grid. A SCALE selector (Free, 12-TET or 24-TET) turns the continuous glide into a hexagonal isomorphic keyboard you play in the air: move a hand into a cell and the pitch snaps to that exact note, so you always play in tune. Choose 24-TET for microtonal quarter tones on a honeycomb harmonic table you sweep with your hands, never a key you tap.
Polyphonic, up to 12 voices. Can a theremin play chords? This one can: it tracks four hands live at once, so two people can play together, and in Free mode you can pin up to eight held voices in place, layering drones and chords that keep sounding under your hands.
What Hoverophone is not: it is not a meditation, sleep or relaxation player, and there are no guided sessions or pre-made tracks. It is not a touch keyboard or piano you tap on glass, a DAW or a loop sequencer. It listens through the camera, not the microphone, so it never records the room around you.
Your video stays on your device: the camera image is processed live and never leaves it. It uses no microphone, needs no account, and plays without an internet connection.
How to play a theremin:
• Hold the phone so the front camera can see both hands.
• Move a hand up for a higher note, down for a lower note.
• Pinch thumb to finger to fade the volume in and out.
• Add more hands to layer notes into a chord.
• Turn on a scale to snap every note in tune, or add microtonal quarter tones with 24-TET.
Is the theremin hard to play? On a real one, famously yes. Hoverophone gives you the same in-air, no-touch feel with on-screen guides, so you can make sound in seconds and hear what a theremin sounds like for yourself.
Enjoy Hoverophone? Try Glideophone, our companion in-air instrument.
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Stability improvements.
The developer, Maxim Oransky, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
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- Usage Data
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Information
- Provider
- Maxim Oransky
- Size
- 14 MB
- Category
- Music
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.6 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.6 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.6 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 14.6 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.3 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
English and 16 more
- English, Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © Maxim Oranskiy