In case you’ve ever spent approach too lengthy scrolling by means of limitless feeds about nothing, you will have been suggested to the touch grass. It’s a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, principally telling you to sign off and go exterior. However one developer took the idea to the subsequent degree.
Rhys Kentish launched an iOS app final week known as Touch Grass, which locks distracting apps till you actually stroll exterior and take a photograph of grass.
“I struggled with my display screen time and labored out that I’d spend seven years of my life wanting down at my telephone if I didn’t change one thing,” Kentish advised TechCrunch. “I needed extra friction than different options on the market, one thing to get me out of the home within the morning. I needed to interrupt the behavior of reaching for my telephone within the morning and doomscrolling for an hour or two earlier than beginning my day.”
Don’t even attempt dishonest; utilizing a pc imaginative and prescient AI, the app can distinguish between home crops and precise outside grass. So, after the app rejected a photograph of my Monstera plant, I went exterior and located the closest inexperienced factor: a bush. I might argue {that a} bush is grass-adjacent, however the Contact Grass app is hellbent on making you contact precise grass, so the bush was not enough.
I had a quick second of panic, wanting round my city road, the place I’m surrounded by concrete and brick on all sides. There are many timber — a rarity in the course of a metropolis — however like a bush, a tree will not be grass. I needed to cross the road to discover a patch of grass in entrance of a neighbor’s home, and solely then was I granted entry to open TikTok on my telephone.
For Kentish, who works full time as an app developer at an company, this degree of friction is the purpose.
“Folks’s reactions to it have been, ‘Haha, that’s a humorous idea,’ however now for some individuals it’s, ‘Haha, that’s a humorous idea, however that is truly serving to me,’” he mentioned.
The humor within the app is contingent on how critical it’s about actually making you go exterior. However on the identical time, Kentish doesn’t need customers to the touch grass after darkish, when it will not be as secure to take action. The app asks to see a consumer’s location (which will be granted as a one-time permission) in order that it is aware of when the solar units within the space. Then, customers can customise their settings to navigate how blocks will work when going exterior and touching grass isn’t possible.
The freemium app provides all customers the power to lock two apps, which may solely be unlocked by touching grass — however you possibly can allow a function that makes you pay what you wish to open an app. It doesn’t matter what you pay, half of the associated fee can be donated to rewilding efforts within the U.Ok., Kentish says. If you wish to lock extra than simply two apps, you possibly can join $5.99 monthly or $49.99 per 12 months.
The idea of paid unlocks has been within the app’s DNA since earlier than Kentish got here up with the touching grass idea. A couple of 12 months and a half in the past, Kentish posted a video on TikTok about an app he designed for himself, which transferred cash from his checking account to his financial savings each time he opened TikTok. However the thought of touching grass is a little more palatable — and humorous — than one thing that requires you to hyperlink your checking account.
Since its launch on Friday, the app has been downloaded about 50,000 instances. As an impartial developer, Kentish is operating the app on his personal, however he mentioned he isn’t against curiosity from buyers. The funding may assist him develop an Android app and market the app past his personal social media accounts.
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