Apps like Thisissand, compared

Thisissand started in 2008 as an art-student web experiment and caught on. In 2012 it became an app, and it still runs today, maintained by Beige Elephant. It's free on the App Store and Google Play, with no ads and an optional "Toolkit" purchase.

It's the simplest idea in the genre: pick colors, pour sand, watch it stack in layers, and listen to it fall. There are no elements, no chemistry, and no goal, only pouring.

People go looking for alternatives when they want one of these things:

• More materials and reactions: fire, water, plants, real chemistry
• Something that runs offline on a phone
• Deeper physics on a desktop
• A calmer, sound-and-motion toy instead of a drawing tool

The sections below map the falling-sand world, checked maker by maker.

The last two columns need a word of explanation. "Sound" means a built-in, generated soundscape: Thisissand plays a pouring sound, the other four have no built-in sound, and Dunarium generates a live ASMR mix as the sand moves. "Offline" means browser toys need a connection, while the native and desktop apps run without one.

Two stand out, both good and free.

Sandspiel: Max Bittker built it in late 2018. About 20 elements (sand, water, fire, plant, fungus, lava) run as cellular automata, with the engine written in Rust compiled to WebAssembly. People share what they make in a community gallery. There are no ads and no signup. Its strength is that it stays small, elegant, and social. Source is on GitHub.

Sandboxels: made by R74n, and as of February 2026 it lives on neal.fun (home of Infinite Craft). This is the deep browser one, with 500+ elements plus heat, electricity, chemical reactions, cooking, and life. It's free in the browser with no ads, and there's also a $0.99 Steam build. Its strength is the sheer element count and interaction depth, which is hard to beat for free.

On iPhone, both are websites, so open them in Safari. Neither has an official App Store app, so skip the look-alike clones.

These two are the tinkerer's picks.

sand:box, by smellymoo, offers 85+ materials, an uncluttered ad-free canvas, and 50M+ installs on Android. There's also a paid Steam version (about $1.99) for Windows, macOS, and Linux. On a phone it's smooth, generous, and clean.

Is sand:box safe? The app itself is legitimate, with 50M+ installs, no ads, and a Teacher Approved mark on Google Play. The catch is discovery: smellymoo has almost no web presence, so a search for "sand:box download" surfaces APK-mirror and "MOD APK" sites instead of a home page. Install it from Google Play (or Steam), not from those mirrors.

The Powder Toy is the deep end. It simulates air pressure and velocity, heat, and electronics, with a huge library of shared saves. It's free and open source under the GPL, so you can read or modify the source on GitHub. It's desktop-first (Windows, macOS, Linux), with an Android port. Nothing on this list goes deeper.

Dunarium isn't trying to out-element Sandboxels. It sits in a different lane: a relaxing, tilt-driven sand toy available on iPhone and Android.

What sets it apart from everything above:

• Real tilt gravity. Tilt the phone and the sand falls the way you tip it, draining a corner or, when you shake, churning into a new landscape. "Make this upright" sets any resting angle as level, or you can freeze gravity entirely. Each scene is computed live as you move.
• Live ASMR sound. A procedural soundscape of ticks, bloops, and churns is generated as the sand moves, with a per-voice mixer for sand, bubbles, and churn. Thisissand has a pouring sound; Dunarium gives you a full mix you shape.
• Layered materials in glass. Sand, viscous gel, and rising air bubbles sit inside 15 glass shapes, and you pour and stir them with a finger.
• Looks and moods. There are 22 sand palettes, 25 backdrops (some animated, one live-camera), adjustable grain size, and a random look roll. Moments include Zen (slow drifting gravity), Ambient (a dim bedside scene with a clock), a Sleep timer that fades light and sound out, and a Focus hourglass ending in a soft chime.
• Offline and ad-free. No ads, no account, and it works offline after install. Your sensor readings and camera frames stay on the device. Record a clip with the soundscape baked into the video, add a caption, and the clip ends on a card crediting the look.

Dunarium is free to play, and an optional one-time $4.99 "Unlock Everything" opens every palette, glass shape, and backdrop. There's no subscription.

Dunarium is a toy for winding down and idle play.

Quick picks by what you want:

• Most materials, free, right now → Sandboxels (browser, 500+ elements)
• Elegant and social, free → Sandspiel (browser)
• Best on an Android phone, no ads → sand:box
• Deepest physics, for tinkerers → The Powder Toy (desktop, open source)
• The original, simplest, most meditative → Thisissand
• Calm, tilt and generated sound, on a phone → Dunarium (iPhone, Android)

Most of these cost nothing to try, so the easiest test is to open a couple and see which one you keep reaching for.