In a Hyperconnected World, This App Disconnects You on Purpose
In the age of analog wellness, one app is betting on green—literally: Touch Grass
Could a Reddit user help save us all from doomscrolling? We may be about to find out.
What began just four months ago as a concept posted on r/sideproject—a subreddit where budding entrepreneurs and creatives share their passion projects—has quickly gone viral, as consumers seek new ways to ramp up their productivity and support their mental and emotional well-being.
Its name? Touch Grass, a cheeky-titled app created by London’s Rhys Kentish as a clever and proactive solution to reclaim time lost to phone use—but with real positive benefits, including moving the wellness and mental health conversation forward.
Ironically enough, Touch Grass has hit the app store as we are entering the age of analog wellness, a term coined by Global Wellness Summit’s Beth McGroarty to describe living life offline, detoxing from the digital world and favoring in-person connection through device-free retreats and experiences where a cell phone simply doesn’t fit, such as a communal sauna.
If the concept of touching grass to re-access your phone’s most addicting apps sounds performative, Touch Grass quickly grounds it with a sobering feature: an interactive quiz where users enter their age and the average number of hours they spend on their phone each day. The app then calculates how many hours that adds up to in a year—and translates it into days and even years over a lifetime.
Users can then share their motivation for spending less time behind a screen, whether it’s reconnecting with nature or being more present with others. Touch Grass then prompts users to select their most distracting apps, which will be blocked until they physically touch grass—literally.
For subscribers, the app costs $5.99 per month or $49.99 annually, with a one-week free trial. To function properly, it requires access to screen time data, the phone’s camera and notifications. Users get one free “skip” per month, allowing them to bypass the grass-touching requirement, but additional skips must be purchased—at a price the user chooses. The app also offers the option to disable skips entirely.
Once prompted to touch grass to unblock their apps, users simply snap a photo using their phone’s camera. The app then uses computer vision to verify that the image is, in fact, real grass. Premium users have the ability to block unlimited apps and bulk app categories, as well as access to their screen time history to track progress.
Touch Grass is transparent about where the money goes: 50% of revenue supports the developer, while the other half funds tree planting in partnership with various rewilding charities across the U.K.
A free version lets users block up to two apps of their choice, includes its signature “grass detection system,” and reveals current screen time stats.
Propelled in part by his Reddit posts documenting the app’s development, in a week since its launch, Touch Grass has quickly hit 50,000 downloads and has seen over £100 worth of skips purchased, according to recent post by Kentish on LinkedIn.
“I’ve always loved the tech for good movement and that’s why touch grass feels so fulfilling, trying to give people back their time whilst also trying to do some good for the world!” he added.