If you’ve ever spent too much time scrolling through endless feeds about nothing, you may have been advised to touch the grass. It’s a tongue-in-cheek piece of advice that essentially suggests you log off and go outside. But one developer has taken this concept to the next level.
Rhys Kentish last week launched an iOS app called Touch Grass, which blocks distracting apps until you literally go outside and take a picture of the grass.
“I was struggling with my screen time and realized that I would spend seven years of my life looking at my phone if I didn’t change something,” Kentish told TechCrunch. “I wanted something more compelling than other solutions, something that would get me out of the house in the morning. I wanted to get out of the habit of reaching for my phone in the morning and scrolling through pages for an hour or two before starting my day.”
Don’t even try to cheat: using artificial intelligence, the app can distinguish indoor plants from real grass outdoors. So, after the app rejected the photo of my monstera, I went outside and found the nearest green plant: a bush. I would argue that the bush is a neighbor of the grass, but the Touch Grass app is very insistent on getting you to touch real grass, so the bush wasn’t enough.
I had a brief moment of panic as I looked back at my city street, where I am surrounded by concrete and brick on all sides. There are a lot of trees here – a rarity in the city center – but like a bush, a tree is not grass. I had to cross the street to find a patch of grass in front of a neighbor’s house, and only then did I get access to TikTok on my phone.
For Kentish, who works full-time as an app developer for an agency, this level of friction is key.
“People’s reaction to it was: “Ha ha, that’s a funny idea,” but now some people are saying: ‘Ha ha, that’s a funny idea, but it actually helps me,’” he says.
The humor in the app depends on how serious it is about actually getting you to go outside. But at the same time, Kentish doesn’t want users to touch the weed after dark, when it might not be as safe. The app asks for the user’s location (which can be provided as a one-time permission) to know when the sun goes down in that area. Users can then customize their settings to determine how the blocks will work when it is not possible to go outside and touch the grass.
The free app gives all users the option to lock two apps that can only be unlocked by touching the grass – but you can enable a feature that will make you pay as much as you want to open the app. No matter how much you pay, half the cost will be donated to rewilding in the UK, says Kentish. If you want to block more than two apps, you can subscribe to the service for $5.99 per month or $49.99 per year.
The concept of paid unlocks was embedded in the app’s DNA even before Kentish came up with the concept of “tapping the grass.” About a year and a half ago, Kentish posted a video on TikTok about an app he had developed for himself that transferred money from his current account to his savings every time he opened TikTok. But the idea of touching the grass is a little more enjoyable – and funnier – than something that requires a bank account link.
Since its launch on Friday, the app has been downloaded about 50,000 times. As an independent developer, Kentish is running the app on his own, but he said he wouldn’t mind interest from investors. Funding could help him develop the app for Android and market it beyond his own social media accounts.
