If you’ve ever spent way too long scrolling through endless feeds about nothing, you may have been advised to touch grass. It’s a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, basically telling you to log off and go outside. But one developer took the concept to the next level.
Rhys Kentish launched an iOS app last week called Touch Grass, which locks distracting apps until you literally walk outside and take a photo of grass.
“I struggled with my screen time and worked out that I’d spend seven years of my life looking down at my phone if I didn’t change something,” Kentish told TechCrunch. “I wanted more friction than other solutions out there, something to get me out of the house in the morning. I wanted to break the habit of reaching for my phone in the morning and doomscrolling for an hour or two before starting my day.”
Don’t even try cheating; using a computer vision AI, the app can distinguish between house plants and actual outdoor grass. So, after the app rejected a photo of my Monstera plant, I went outside and found the nearest green thing: a bush. I would argue that a bush is grass-adjacent, but the Touch Grass app is hellbent on making you touch actual grass, so the bush was not sufficient.
I had a brief moment of panic, looking around my urban street, where I’m surrounded by concrete and brick on all sides. There are plenty of trees — a rarity in the middle of a city — 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 was I granted access to open TikTok on my phone.
For Kentish, who works full time as an app developer at an agency, this level of friction is the point.
“People’s reactions to it have been, ‘Haha, that’s a funny concept,’ but now for some people it’s, ‘Haha, that’s a funny concept, but this is actually helping me,’” he said.
The humor in the app is contingent on how serious it is about really making you go outside. But at the same time, Kentish doesn’t want users to touch grass after dark, when it may not be as safe to do so. The app asks to see a user’s location (which can be granted as a one-time permission) so that it knows when the sun sets in the area. Then, users can customize their settings to navigate how blocks will work when going outside and touching grass isn’t feasible.
The freemium app gives all users the ability to lock two apps, which can only be unlocked by touching grass — but you can enable a feature that makes you pay what you want to open an app. No matter what you pay, half of the cost will be donated to rewilding efforts in the U.K., Kentish says. If you want to lock more than just two apps, you can sign up for $5.99 per month or $49.99 per year.
The concept of paid unlocks has been in the app’s DNA since before the Kentish came up with the touching grass concept. About a year and a half ago, Kentish posted a video on TikTok about an app he designed for himself, which transferred money from his checking account to his savings every time he opened TikTok. But the idea of touching grass is a bit more palatable — and funny — than something that requires you to link your bank account.
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 isn’t opposed to interest from investors. The funding could help him develop an Android app and market the app beyond his own social media accounts.