Doomscroll Blocker with Physical Challenge

Phone addiction ruins morning routines as users mindlessly scroll for hours. This app uses device screen time APIs and phone camera vision to require users to physically touch grass or go outside before accessing addictive apps. A gamified way to build healthier phone habits.

Screen time and digital wellness apps saw a surge post-pandemic and have maintained steady interest, with Apple and Google both expanding native screen time controls — which is precisely the problem here. Both platforms have tightened restrictions on third-party apps overriding or deeply integrating with screen time APIs, making the "require physical action before app access" mechanic technically fragile and potentially impossible to enforce reliably on iOS without jailbreaking. The closest substitutes are One Sec and Opal, both of which have carved out real user bases with friction-based intervention without needing camera vision gimmicks. Revenue is genuinely unclear — this category skews toward one-time purchases or low-priced subscriptions, and users who want to stop doomscrolling bad enough to pay are a small subset of the people who complain about it. The single biggest risk is platform policy: Apple has historically rejected or neutered apps that attempt to control access to other apps, and building a business on a mechanic that App Review can kill overnight is a structural problem, not a product one.