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If you ever spend a very long scrolling through endless feed about something you may be advised to touch the grass. This is a tongue-in-cheek consultation, basically tells you to log off and go out. However, a developer took the idea to the next level.
Rice Kenthish launched an iOS app last week Touches the grassUntil you literally walk out and take pictures of the grass, it locks misleading applications.
“I fought with the time of my screen and worked that if I didn’t change anything I spent seven years in my life look at my phone,” Ketish told TechCrunch. “I wanted more friction than other solutions there, something to get me out of the house in the morning. I wanted to break the habit of reaching my phone in the morning and Doomscolling One or two hours before starting my day. “
Don’t even try to cheat; Using Computer Vision AI, the application can distinguish between home plants and actual outdoor grass. So, after the app rejected a picture of my monstra tree, I went out and got the nearest green thing: a bush. I would argue that a bush-adjacent, but the touch grass app is hell for you to touch the real grass, so the bushes were not enough.
There was a short moment of my panic, looking around my urban street, where I surrounded by concrete and brick. There are lots of trees – a rarity in the middle of a city – but a tree like a bushes is not grass. I had to cross the street to find a patch of grass in front of the neighbor’s house and only then I was given an open access to my phone.
This level of friction is the key to Kenitish, who works as an app developer at an agency.
“The people’s response to it was, ‘haha, it’s a fun idea,’ but now for some people, ‘haha, it’s a fun idea, but it is actually helping me,” “he said.
The humor in the app is working on how serious you are really out of the way. But at the same time, Kantish does not want users to touch the grass after dark, when it may not be so safe. The app asks to see a user’s position (which can be granted as one -time permission) so that it knows when the sun goes down in this region. Then, users can customize their settings to navigate how blocks will work when they go out and touch the grass.
The Freemium application gives all users the ability to lock two applications, which can only be unlocked with grass – but you can enable a feature that you want to open an app that makes you pay. No matter what you pay, the cost will be given half the grant Reconstruction Attempts in the UK, Kenitis says. If you just want to lock two apps you can sign up $ 5.99 or $ 49.99 per month.
The concept of paid unlocks has already been in the DNA of the app before the Kenth Touching grass concept is brought. About a year and a half ago, Kantish Posted a video He has designed for himself a ticket about an app, which transfer money to his savings from his checking account while opening the tick. But the idea of ​​touching the grass is a bit more transparent – and funny – something you need to link to your bank account.
The app has been downloaded about 50,000 times since it was launched on Friday. As an independent developer, Kantish itself is running the app, but he said he was not opposed to investors’ interest. This fund can help him develop an Android application and marketing the app outside his own social media accounts.
