Portal - Immersive Escapes 4+
Change Your Surroundings
Portal Labs Ltd
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- Free
- Offers In-App Purchases
Screenshots
Description
A Stunning New Productivity App For Today’s Distraction-Filled World.
What is Portal?
Portal is a productivity app that uses immersive technologies to transform your surroundings into a haven for focus and creativity.
So, it’s just another productivity app, right?
Well, not exactly. It’s a totally new approach to productivity that’s shaped by the latest research in the field of environmental psychology which focuses on the impact our surroundings have on our state of mind, wellbeing and cognitive performance.
Why are our surroundings so important to our productivity?
It’s no secret that our surroundings have a huge impact on how we think and feel - it’s something architects and urban planners have understood for centuries. The surroundings in which we work are no different. Whether we’re working in an office, from home or in a coffee shop our surroundings can either support or hinder our productivity. When they work against us they make focus and productivity an uphill struggle, leading to longer hours, stress and low morale. However, when we are in surroundings that are attuned to helping us think and focus clearly the effect is profound.
How does Portal work?
Portal uses the latest immersive technologies, including dynamic (head tracked) spatial audio, smart lighting & retina-quality visuals, to transform your surroundings and provide instant escapes to some of the world’s most peaceful and awe-inspiring locations.
Imagine finding your focus in the midst of a thunderstorm deep in the Amazon Rainforest; making your next big breakthrough high in the Himalayas; or getting lost in flow in the remote Highlands of Scotland.
It’s a beautiful and effortless approach to productivity, but also one that’s incredibly effective and backed by a growing mountain of scientific evidence and research.
Who is Portal for?
Ideal for entrepreneurs, digital & creative professionals, students, but really anyone who finds being productive and creative a struggle in today’s distraction-filled world.
Join us on a journey to better surroundings, and experience a productivity app like no other.
KEY FEATURES
Window To The World
Window-like visuals seamlessly integrate into your desktop instantly take your mind away.
Lifelike Sound
World-class spatial audio captured in the world’s greatest locations. It’s sound that makes you feel as though you’re there, creates a sense of space and separation whilst removing distraction and improving focus.
Immersive Lighting
Philips Hue & Nanoleaf smart lighting adds an extra depth of immersion, tuning in to your circadian rhythm and allowing you to control the mood and energy of your space.
MORE THINGS TO LOVE
- Over 100 portals to some of the most beautiful and peaceful corners of the world, captured to help improve focus, concentration & relaxation
- Award-winning design for beautiful aesthetics and simple intuitive use
- Support for Shortcuts, allowing automations for power users
- Built to be CPU, GPU & battery efficient
- Privacy conscious approach: no data harvesting, no targeted advertising
To experience Dynamic (head tracked) Spatial Audio you will need macOS Sonoma or up, and headphones that support head tracking via Apple Core Motion, currently AirPods (3rd gen), AirPods Pro, AirPods Max & Beats Fit Pro.
SUBSCRIPTION PRICING & TERMS
Portal Premium offers access to our entire Library. Our free version provides access to a limited selection of portals with no ads or usage restrictions.
Premium options include: a monthly membership, an annual membership (with a 7 day free trial) and a Lifetime membership, which is paid for by a one-off upfront payment.
Please note that monthly and annual subscriptions will automatically renew unless turned off in your iTunes Account Settings at least 24 hours before the end of the current subscription period. To manage your subscription go to your iTunes Account settings.
Terms of Use: https://portal.app/terms
Privacy Policy: https://portal.app/privacy
What’s New
Version 1.2.3
Over the past month we’ve taken the opportunity to reflect and excitingly plot and plan the year ahead. If you’re interested you can find our thoughts for 2024 here: https://portal.app/campfire/thoughts-for-2024
Although, it hasn’t all been planning - we’ve packed this release with improvements and fixes for a number of issues you’ve helped flag.
Improvements
- Better resolution selection for screens in portrait orientation.
- You no longer need to relaunch the app after you ‘Clear Cache’.
- ‘Support Info’ now includes better diagnostic data.
- ‘Support Info’ exports now have improved customer feedback and error handling.
Fixes
- Philips Hue lights which use IP address connections are now more reliable.
- Fixes lighting discovery and connection issues on new macOS versions.
- Network connection errors which prevent motion visuals playing are better identified and retried.
- The specific loading error preventing motion visuals playing is now shown in Portal’s UI.
- Audio streaming now waits for a network connection and can better recover from network errors.
- Collection subtitles in the ‘All Portal’ section of the library are no longer cut off.
- Portals with longer names now are better spaced when displayed on smaller screens.
- The ‘Now Playing’ bar height is now correct across different screen sizes.
- Portal’s menu bar window now positions itself correctly when opened on secondary displays.
- Fixes a rare crash when retrying audio downloads
- Audio downloads that are being retried are now cancelled correctly when stopping playback
A special shout out to Don from the US and Harbin from Australia who have been amazing in helping us debug some of the thornier issues above - thanks guys!
As always, if there's anything we can do to improve your experience, whether that's a bug fix or a new feature, please drop us a line at hello@portal.app - we’d love to hear from you.
In the meantime, we hope you’re excited for what the year might bring :)
Many thanks,
Andy, Nick, Tim & Stu - Team Portal.
Ratings and Reviews
Editors’ Notes
How can an app about sound look this gorgeous? Portal is part immersive audio experience and part travel companion, a way to lose yourself in lush audio environments from all corners of the globe, all through a cool minimalist UI and stunning HD visuals. Focus, study, or snooze to downpours in the Amazon, lapping waves from the lochs of Scotland, whale song from the deep blue waters of Tahiti, or thunder on the Great Plains. Tap a sound and the app transforms into an aesthetically pleasing clock; set a timer to drift off to sleep to winds on the Isle of Skye or wake to a springtime chorus in London. Bonus: Pair compatible AirPods to experience it all in spatial audio.
Everything costs money!
At least make one or two free or make us watch an ad or someting, this is rediculous!!!!
Developer Response ,
UPDATE: 👋 Hi iwshsjosnh ba, I just wanted to get back in touch to let you know that following your feedback we're pushed really hard to make providing a free offering a possibility...and the exciting news is we've recently launched our "Open Access" programme where we've made a selection of portals accessible to anyone to use for free. No ads, no usage restrictions.
This way people like yourself can try Portal without committing to a free 7-day trial (although this is still an option if you'd like to try our full Premium offering), but importantly it's also a step towards our mission of making great surroundings accessible to all - and so people that can't otherwise afford a Premium Membership can still use Portal and the benefits we hope it brings to people's lives.
We hope you give our "Open Access" portals a try and thoroughly enjoy giving Portal a whirl!
Thanks again for your feedback,
Andy, Nick, Tim & Stu - Team Portal.
PREVIOUS: 👋 Hi iwshsjosnh ba,
So sorry we don't have a free offering available, in truth, we'd absolutely love to offer this but unfortunately at the moment we've just been unable to on our Mac app (we do provide a free tier on our iPhone & iPad apps). Instead, please note that we do have a FREE 7-day trial available, and there's absolutely no obligation whatsoever to continue onto a Premium Membership.
All you have to do is cancel the trial at least 24 hours before the end of the trial period and it won't roll into a paid Membership. You can even cancel the trial immediately after you start the trial and still enjoy full access for the full 7-day trial period - that's certainly what I would recommend doing.
You might be wondering why we don't have a free tier on our Mac app and we want to be completely transparent about this. It's absolutely not because we want to be hard nosed and force people onto a free trial - that's just not us - it's why against all convention we offer a free tier on our iPhone/iPad app without any time limits or restricted functionality.
The tricky thing with our Mac app is we not only deliver multi-channel spatial audio but also up to 8K cinematic motion visuals to provide an even more immersive, true-to-life multi-sensory experience that makes the most of the larger and higher resolution displays with Mac.
As a consequence, the download route that we adopted for content delivery on our iOS/iPadOS apps just wasn't possible on Mac, as the audio-visual files were just far too large. And so, we've had to completely re-engineer our approach to content delivery on our Mac app to support streaming instead, which means our server costs can ratchet up really very quickly - especially if we offered a purely free offering.
By way of context, the number of individuals that actively use Portal free on our iOS and iPadOS apps is in the hundreds of thousands. And so even if we had a fraction of that number of people on Mac using a free tier the server costs alone could very feasibly put us out of business. Especially as we're an independent bootstrapped business, and so don't have external investment money to provide us a cushion if costs quickly outstrip revenue nor are we Goliaths like YouTube (Google) that can absorb this cost, plus we're not the type of app to use ads so we have to play these things a little more cautiously than some.
However, that's not to say that offering a free tier on Mac is completely off the table forever. We're very keen at looking at options that would make that a sustainable possibility, but for the time being we're just not in a position to do so right now - sorry about that.
In the meantime, as mentioned, we'd love for you to give the trial a whirl. I know I'm massively biased, but it really is an incredible experience if you want to focus and think clearly in today's busy and distraction-filled world.
If you have any other questions or there's anything else I might be able to help with, please don't hesitate to drop us a line at hello@portal.app.
Many thanks,
Andy, Nick, Tim & Stu - Team Portal.
App Privacy
The developer, Portal Labs Ltd, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary based on, for example, the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Provider
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Portal Labs Ltd has identified itself as a trader for this app and confirmed that this product or service complies with European Union law.
- DUNS Number
- 224585915
- Address
- 20-22 Wenlock Road LONDON N1 7GU United Kingdom
- Phone Number
- +44 02076641562
- info@portal.app
- Size
- 18.4 MB
- Category
- Health & Fitness
- Compatibility
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- iPhone
- Requires iOS 13.0 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 13.0 or later.
- iPod touch
- Requires iOS 13.0 or later.
- Mac
- Requires macOS 13.3 or later.
- Apple Vision
- Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- Languages
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English
- Age Rating
- 4+
- Copyright
- © Portal Labs Ltd
- Price
- Free
- In-App Purchases
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- Monthly Membership 4,99 €
- Annual Membership 39,99 €
- V2 (No Longer Available) 6,99 €
- Portal Membership (Lifetime) 249,99 €
- Upgrade (No Longer Available) 9,99 €
Supports
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Family Sharing
Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled.