Hoverophone Downloads & RevenueHoverophone: Air Theremin · App Store

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.