Haptic Strings

Haptic Strings is a small audio haptics experiment that turns your iPhone into a guitar string simulator for designers and developers. Swipe across a string and you feel a custom vibration pattern that matches the string’s audio and decay, as closely as the Taptic Engine allows.

Each string is tuned with a handcrafted custom haptic pattern that follows the way a real string vibrates over time, rather than a simple linear rumble. The result is a richer, more believable illusion of a guitar string “ringing” in your hand, blending sound, touch and motion on screen into one interaction.

Use it as a pocket lab to study multisensory design, demo custom haptics to your team, or open it during a talk when you want people to feel what you are explaining.

What you can do
• Swipe to feel each string
Drag your finger along individual strings to trigger synchronized audio and custom haptics. Each string has its own pattern, tuned around its frequency and decay curve within the iPhone hardware range.
• Study custom haptics in isolation
Toggle a dedicated haptic only mode so you can focus on vibration without audio. Great for workshops, teardowns and side by side comparisons.
• See the UI respond with the vibration
Watch strings highlight and thicken as they play, with gradients and timing that follow the same energy as the haptic and sound. Visual, audio and touch feedback are designed to work as one experience.
• Onboard people in seconds
Clear affordances and subtle prompts guide people toward the vertical swipe gesture, so even someone who skips the instructions can figure it out by instinct.
• Share the process behind the prototype
Open the profile drawer to see background on the project and links to resources on custom haptics, audio haptic design and the tools used to build the prototype.

Who it is for
Haptic Strings is made for:
• Designers who want to understand custom haptics through their hands, not only documentation
• Developers who need a concrete reference when tuning haptic patterns
• Educators who want a simple, memorable demo of multi sensory interaction
• Anyone curious about how sound, touch and visual feedback can align to create richer experiences.

Design principles behind Haptic Strings

The app is built around a few simple ideas:
• Multi sensory first
Start from the feeling of the interaction, then let visuals and UI follow that core experience.
• Respect hardware constraints
The Taptic Engine only supports a limited frequency range, so higher strings are approximated instead of faked as perfect matches. The goal is honesty and coherence, not lab accuracy.
• Tiny, focused, opinionated
No chords, no recording, no extra knobs. Just one clear interaction that explores what custom haptics can do in a narrow but deep space.

No account. No ads. Just a small, focused tool to help you design and discuss better haptics.