Medito

Medito is a 100% free, non-commercial meditation app for Android and iOS, maintained by the Medito Foundation (a registered Dutch nonprofit) and shipped from a single Flutter codebase. It targets both first-time practitioners and people deepening an existing practice, and it makes a deliberate promise in the README: no ads, no spam, no sign-up, no paywall.

Why it matters

• Permanently free, foundation-backed. There is no Stripe path, no in-app purchase, and no ad SDK wiring anything in. The Foundation funds development and content licensing, so the product never has to optimise for retention metrics the way consumer meditation apps do.
• Rich, CMS-driven content model. The app streams its library from a backend, not from a baked-in asset bundle. Contributors can add Packs (themed collections such as "Sleep" or "Stress"), Paths (ordered multi-day courses like the 30-day intro), and individual Tracks (single guided sessions) without shipping a new release.
• Production-grade audio on Flutter. Playback is built on just_audio plus audio_service, so the player keeps running as a foreground notification when the screen is off or the app is backgrounded, and the user can hand off to a Bluetooth headset without losing position. An optional background_sound layer mixes rain, white noise, and similar beds under the guided voice.
• Volunteer-friendly Mock mode. A third run mode (alongside Development and Production) intercepts every network call and serves hardcoded sample data, so a new contributor can flutter run the full UI without provisioning Firebase, Stripe, or CMS credentials. This is a striking contrast to most Flutter apps that gate local builds on real backend keys.

How it works

The Flutter app is split into clean layers. lib/models/ defines the content domain — Packs, Paths, Tracks, Sessions, and the user-side models (favorites, local stats, audio-completion events). lib/repositories/ and lib/services/ wrap the REST API and the audio_service notification surface. lib/providers/ exposes state via provider (Riverpod code generation lives behind build_runner in newer versions), and lib/views/ is organised by screen: home, explore, pack, path, track, player, favorites, stats, settings, onboarding, and a small debug surface that the Foundation uses internally.

Playback starts in PlayerView, which is fed a Track object and delegates to a singleton audio handler. The handler exposes a stream of position and playing-state events so the UI can re-render progress without polling. Background sounds are a second independent audio context that can be toggled on top of any Track. Session completion is detected by listening for the audio handler's completed event and persisted locally with shared_preferences and small Hive-style JSON files, which then feed the Stats view.

Build and release tooling is unusually thorough for a volunteer project: Fastlane for store submissions, Shorebird for OTA Dart patches, Maestro for UI flows, and a VERIFY_APK.md document that instructs sideload users to confirm APK signatures against the Foundation's published key — a notable trust measure given the wave of malicious meditation-app clones on third-party stores.

Caveats

• Content license is mixed. The app code is AGPL-3.0, but the in-app content is licensed separately. Some tracks are original Creative Commons content, others are aggregated from third parties under their own terms; the README is explicit that the Foundation cannot police downstream re-use of aggregated content.
• Backend keys required for real content. Mock mode lets you build the app, but if you want to publish a fork with live content you still need API credentials from the Foundation.
• No web/desktop target. Despite being Flutter, the project is intentionally mobile-only — no flutter run -d chrome story and no desktop build configuration.
• Volunteer onboarding is human-paced. The Foundation asks prospective code contributors to email Katie directly with a CV and hours-of-week commitment, rather than self-serve via a CLA bot.

Deployment notes

git clone https://github.com/meditohq/medito-app.git
cd medito-app
flutter pub get
# Mock mode — no keys required
flutter run --flavor mock

The Foundation distributes signed builds through the Play Store, the App Store, and GitHub Releases (APK). Sideloaders should follow VERIFY_APK.md and confirm the APK signature matches the Foundation's published certificate before installing.

Integration tip: Medito is a useful reference app for any Grove record tagged meditation, mindfulness, or wellbeing, and its Mock-mode pattern is worth borrowing for any Flutter project that wants to lower the contributor bar without leaking staging data.