Comment by _-x-_

13 hours ago

Here's a Reddit thread of other people experiencing the same issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1su82sc/headspace_app_...

26 comments

_-x-_

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cortesoft  11 hours ago

This is fascinating. I am very curious to find out what the actual cause of this turns out to be.

  • dyauspitr  7 hours ago

    It downloaded itself on my phone as well. I thought it was some quirk with the Apple Watch sync because I used to have headspace installed at some point and that automatically shows up on the Apple Watch but deleting an app on the iPhone doesn’t always delete the corresponding Apple Watch app. So if you open headspace on the Apple Watch I assumed it redownloaded itself on the iPhone.

  • trueno  10 hours ago

    same. i get blasted with ads for this app on whatever platform, never installed it myself. the amount of promotions + this = my underdeveloped brain is so ready to assume the worst here. been a while since i used my pitchfork & i'm here for the riot.

    if it is, in fact, something nefarious at play that would be a pretty crazy 2026 era exploit. but i'm certain it's a bug/artifact of some sort that, for whatever reason, affects this specific app.

    • powersnail  10 hours ago

      Maybe the developer was using Headspace as part of the test data and it bled into production?

      It's hard to imagine what Headspace would like to achieve if this were an exploit executed by them. It's so salient, that it makes no sense to do on purpose. At least some portion of Apple employees and their families are going to be affected by this, and this would escalate to the legal department immediately.

      My money is on Apple being the buggy one here.

      4 replies →

    • 0123456789ABCDE  1 hour ago

      when "explaining a thing, no more assumptions should be made than are necessary."

      could be an ios bug; a bug with the notification library they use, any other app behaving similarly?

      considering the possibility this was on purpose, they would risk getting banned from the appstore. no, they are not big enough to avoid that. so it's unlikely this was intentional.

Bjartr  13 hours ago

Based on that I'd guess either a meditation app company has figured out how to circumvent a lot of controls put in place by Apple, or it's a bug on Apple's side

  • joenot443  5 hours ago

    My guess is it's a bug on the App Store side which will actually hurt Headspace in the long run. If this was a casino app I'd feel a bit differently, but I'd be shocked if someone at Headspace did this deliberately.

    I'm trying to imagine the headspace of a user who deletes an app, only to see it pop back the next morning. Probably not a very relaxing experience :)

  • a34729t  12 hours ago

    Or it is a mandated backdoor, and someone internally objected, and made it easier to exploit than it should be, or leaked how to exploit it?