Tokoshie
Aeternitas
Tokoshie generates endless ambient music: slowly changing chords made from sine waves. Open it and it is already playing. It keeps playing with the screen locked or while you use other apps.
It does not wait for you. Silence it and it goes on unheard; when the sound comes back, it is wherever it has got to.
Thirty-two chords, held one at a time. Each moves on to a chord it shares no note with, and never straight back to the one it came from. How long a chord is held, and how long the change takes, is drawn anew every time, so the piece does not fall into a loop.
It began on 9 September 2026 and has no end. It goes on whether or not anything is playing it; opening the app joins it where it is. With the same key, or none, and the same pace, every device is on the same chord at the same moment, wherever it is, without any of them talking to each other.
The screen
Two chord names, one above and one below, and a single hand like the minute hand of a clock. While the hand is in the upper half, the upper name is what you are hearing; in the lower half, the lower name. The hand crosses the horizontal at the moment one chord has fully given way to the next. The name it has left behind fades, and the next chord's name arrives in its place before the hand comes round to it.
What you can set
- Double-tap anywhere
- A slider appears. It sets the pace: the number shown is how many seconds a chord lasts on average, from seven to fifty-six. It is taken up when you let go: a pace is a piece of its own, so the sound moves to where that piece is now. The slider goes away on its own after eight seconds, or on another double-tap.
- Remembered
- The pace you leave it at is kept, and the next launch begins at that pace. A pace is a piece of its own — everyone at the same pace and key hears the same thing — so changing it means joining that piece where it is now.
- A key, under About
- Leave it empty for the shared piece. Write a word of your own and you hear the piece that word makes. With the same word, or none, and the same pace, every device is on the same chord at the same moment. The key is kept on the device, like the pace.
- About, at the bottom of the screen
- The name, the version, the key, and the privacy policy.
Locking the phone
While Tokoshie is open, the screen stays on. It is meant to be left playing. Lock the phone and the music continues with the screen off.
Tokoshie keeps playing with the screen off and with other apps in front. The Lock Screen and Control Center show it — the name, the mark, and a pause. That is all there is: no next, no previous, no timeline: there are no tracks to skip and nowhere to seek to. Pause it there and the sound stops, not the piece: it goes on unheard, and when you press play, or open the app again, it is wherever it has got to, opening out of silence the way it does at launch.
When another app starts playing sound, or a call comes in, Tokoshie goes quiet and comes back once it can — further on, by however long it was quiet. To stop it for good, close the app.
Privacy
The app collects nothing and sends nothing. It has no network code at all. The pace and the key are the things it keeps, and it keeps them on the device.
This page
The two names and the hand at the top of this page are the piece as it is now — the shared one, with no key, at the usual pace. Tap and it is heard, opening out of silence over two seconds. The browser works it out from its own clock with the same rules as the app, and talks to nothing while it plays. Open this page on two devices and they are on the same chord.
The page plays only while it is open in front of you. The key, the pace, and the piece going on with the screen locked are the app's.
Requirements
iPhone or iPad, iOS 17 or later. Upright on the phone; on the iPad any way up, in a window of whatever size you give it. Dark whatever the system is set to. Headphones or a speaker are worth it: the chords sit low, and a phone's own speaker loses the bottom of them.