★ 🧭 Getting Around — The Redesigned App
FreeAir Coach has a clean, thumb-friendly bottom bar with five buttons. Here's the whole app at a glance:
| Button | What it does |
|---|
| 🫁 Home | Your dashboard — live Clean Air streak, money saved, and your real-time lung-recovery timeline. |
| 📋 Log | Record each craving in a few taps (strength, trigger, and whether you resisted). |
| 🆘 SOS | The raised red center button — instant craving rescue from any screen (Breathing Balloon + Craving Pop game). |
| 🤖 Coach | Your 24/7 AI coach, built on evidence-based CBT. |
| 🙂 Me | Your profile, milestones, Tools & Sessions, and account settings. |
Where did Plan, Relax, Game & Lessons go?
They're all one tap away under Me → Tools & Sessions — along with Staying Free (your maintenance & relapse-prevention screen). Your subscription, provider access, and account deletion live under Me → Account & More.
1 Getting Started
📲 Download FreeAir Coach
Get the free app on your phone — available on both stores:
Prefer the web? You can also use FreeAir Coach right in your mobile browser at app.freeaircoach.com — and add it to your home screen so it works and looks exactly like a native app.
📱 iPhone (Safari)
- Open app.freeaircoach.com in Safari
- Tap the Share button (box with arrow pointing up) at the bottom
- Scroll down and tap "Add to Home Screen"
- Tap "Add" in the top right
- The FreeAir Coach icon now appears on your home screen!
🤖 Android (Chrome)
- Open app.freeaircoach.com in Chrome
- Tap the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top right
- Tap "Add to Home screen"
- Tap "Add" to confirm
- The app icon appears on your home screen!
✅ First-Time Setup (takes about 20 seconds)
- A quick, one-tap-per-screen wizard asks just four things: What are you quitting? (Cigarettes / Vaping / Both), your last cigarette or vape (Today / Yesterday / a date), how many a day, and the cost per pack or pod — no long forms.
- Confirm the brief privacy consent, then you land straight on your live Clean Air clock.
- On the welcome screen, tap "Yes, guide me" for a short interactive walkthrough of each button, or "Skip to Check-in" to dive right in.
- All your data stays on your device only — FreeAir Coach has no health data servers.
💨 Choose Your Quit: Cigarettes, Vaping, or Both
The first onboarding question shapes the entire app for you. Pick what you're actually quitting and every screen adapts.
- Cigarettes — you smoke combustible tobacco. Recovery timeline includes carbon monoxide clearance, cilia recovery, and long-term lung-cancer risk drop. Trigger chips: stress, coffee, food, alcohol, social, driving, boredom.
- Vaping — you use e-cigarettes, pods, or disposables. Timeline focuses on nicotine clearance, taste and smell, sleep, and cardiovascular recovery. Combustion-specific milestones are hidden because they don't apply. Trigger chips add phone / scrolling, studying, gym, and party — the strongest anchors for vape use.
- Both — you use both products. The full smoking timeline applies, plus the vape-specific triggers, and the AI Coach is grounded in both the smoking manual and the vaping guide. The plan is to quit both on the same Quit Day.
The AI Coach adapts too: for vape and dual users it loads a full clinical vaping grounding sourced to CDC, Truth Initiative, USPSTF, and the 2020 Surgeon General Report — and honors the honest fact that no medication is FDA-approved specifically for vaping cessation.
3 🆘 SOS — Emergency Craving Help
Tap the red SOS button in the center of the bottom bar the moment a craving strikes — it's reachable from every screen. It opens two fast tools: the Breathing Balloon (a guided box-breathing exercise — in 4, hold 4, out 4, hold 4 for 3 minutes) and Craving Pop (a 30-second distraction game). Every craving peaks and passes within 3–5 minutes — these tools carry you through that window. The DEADS steps below are a simple coping framework you can also run through in your head, or ask your Coach to walk you through in chat.
Actual redesigned screen
Tap SOS (center)
The DEADS Strategy — In Detail
| Letter | Strategy | Example |
|---|
| DDelay | Set a 5-minute timer and do nothing | "I'll wait until 3:15 before deciding" |
| EEscape | Physically leave the trigger location | Walk out of the break room, go to a different floor |
| AAvoid | Stay away from known trigger environments | Skip the smoking area, avoid the front entrance |
| DDistract | Engage your hands and mind with something else | Play the Craving Game, call a friend, do 10 push-ups |
| SSubstitute | Replace the cigarette with an oral substitute | Water bottle, sugar-free gum, toothpick, celery straw |
💡 Pro Tip: Substitutes to Keep Handy
- Sugar-free gum (mint or cinnamon)
- Toothpicks or coffee stirrers
- Cold water bottle (the cold sensation helps)
- Crunchy vegetables (carrots, celery)
- Nicotine replacement (patch, gum, lozenge) if prescribed
6 🤖 AI Coach
Tap COACH in the bottom nav. Your personal AI quit-smoking coach, available 24/7. Powered by Claude AI, grounded in CBT, Motivational Interviewing, and ACT principles.
Actual redesigned screen
AI Coach
What the Coach Knows About You
The coach receives your first name, what you're quitting (Cigarettes / Vaping / Both), days smoke-free or vape-free, your known triggers, and your readiness stage. This makes every response personally relevant — not generic advice.
💨 Vape and dual users: The Coach also loads a full clinical vaping cessation guide sourced to CDC, Truth Initiative ("This Is Quitting" — text DITCHVAPE to 88709), USPSTF (2021), and the 2020 Surgeon General Report. Ask it about the Penn State Electronic Cigarette Dependence Index, the REFUSE method for social pressure, or how to break the phone-and-vape hand-to-mouth pair — it'll answer from the guide. It will also tell you honestly that no medication is FDA-approved specifically for vaping cessation (NRT and varenicline are extrapolated from cigarette-cessation trials, offered off-label). Smoking users don't get the vaping guide loaded — bandwidth is only spent when it's relevant to you.
Quick Prompt Suggestions
| Prompt | Best time to use |
|---|
| "I'm having a craving right now 🚨" | When an urge hits — get immediate coping strategies |
| "I slipped and smoked 😔" | After a slip — get compassionate relapse management |
| "I haven't smoked today! 🎉" | To celebrate wins and reinforce motivation |
| "What is the DEADS strategy?" | To learn or review the emergency craving tool |
| "I'm stressed and want to smoke" | Stress-triggered cravings — get CBT reframing |
| "Should I try medication?" | To learn about Varenicline, Bupropion, or NRT options |
Sample Conversation
I'm having a craving right now after dinner
I hear you — after-dinner cravings are one of the strongest because it's a deeply conditioned habit. Here's what to do right now: Delay — set a 5-minute timer. While you wait, try brushing your teeth or doing 10 deep breaths. The craving will peak and fade within 3–5 minutes. You can do this! 💪
What if I can't resist?
If you slip, it's not failure — it's data. Log it in the Craving Log and come back to talk. Many people quit successfully after several attempts. One cigarette doesn't erase your progress. What matters is what you do next. 🫁
8 🎮 Craving Game
Open the Me tab, then tap Game under Tools & Sessions (it's also a Home quick action). Beat the 3–5 minute craving window by playing Memory Match — engaging your hands and mind is one of the most effective craving strategies.
🏠HOME
📋LOG
📅PLAN
🤖COACH
😌RELAX
🎮GAME
Craving Game — Memory Match
How to Play
- Tap any card to flip it and reveal an emoji
- Tap a second card to find its match
- Matched pairs stay face-up
- Unmatched pairs flip back — remember their positions!
- Match all 8 pairs to complete the game
- Your time and move count are tracked
Why It Works
Memory Match engages your working memory and visual attention — two cognitive functions that directly compete with craving urges. Research on visual-spatial cognitive tasks (Skorka-Brown et al., Addictive Behaviors, 2015) shows that brief concentration-demanding activities can meaningfully reduce craving intensity. The 3–5 minute game window aligns perfectly with the natural craving arc.
🎯 Game Strategy Tips
- Start from a corner and work systematically — builds concentration
- Whisper the emoji as you flip each card — adds another layer of distraction
- Challenge yourself to beat your move count each time
- After completing the game, check in: is the craving still there? Usually it's gone or significantly reduced
★ 🌿 Staying Free — Maintenance & Relapse Prevention
Actual redesigned screen
Quitting isn't the finish line — staying quit is. Open Me → Tools & Sessions → Staying Free for the maintenance screen:
- Days Maintained — a progress ring toward your next milestone (30, 60, 90, 180, 365 days), with identity-building encouragement.
- Weekly check-in — a quick "how are you feeling about staying smoke-free?" (Solid / Wobbly / Tempted).
- Your watch-list — the triggers most likely to test you, drawn from your own logged data, so you can plan ahead.
- "I had a slip" — a compassionate recovery flow. A slip is not a relapse: your healing, savings, and milestones still count. It routes you to SOS or your Coach to get right back on track.
Note: "DEADS" (Delay, Escape, Avoid, Distract, Substitute) is a coping framework your Coach can walk you through in chat — for hands-on, in-the-moment relief, tap the red SOS button.
