"Touch Grass" as an intervention

Feature Request🍏 iOSMar 9, 2025

As seen on Hacker News: https://touchgrass.now/

Would be cool to add something like this to one sec as well! Don’t unlock the apps unless you take a photo of yourself touching grass (or dirt, depending on the season).

Seems to be popular! I saw this on the chyron of a waiting room TV:

Posted by strident-grass · Mar 9, 2025

In Progress8

Olly Stedall

•

May 14

Having tested this feature more, I think it is best suited for re-interventions vs interventions.

If I sit down on the sofa for a social media break after a few hours work, I don’t want to immediately be required to go outside, at the first intervention I see. What would be great, would be for situations where I have spent 15 minutes or more in a distracting app. When a re-intervention is required, this would be a great moment to be forced to go outside and touch grass. This would help break the habit of doing one intervention after another whilst lying on the sofa.

Anna Filou

•

Apr 22

Haha won't it be super easy to cheat though, even if they have a machine learning algorithm verifying the image, how could it be made in such a way that it doesn't get fooled if you upload an image from Google?

Lucas
Team•
Apr 22
We are currently testing this on Testflight for a while. The intervention opens your camera and you have to take a photo, so you can’t upload anything. Still you can search for a photo of grass on another device, but getting your attention away from your phone screen for a moment could be enough. What do you think?
- Ben
  •
  Apr 24
  I personally think that sounds great. Just looking away for long enough seems like it’s good enough to make you think.
  Lucas
  Team•
  Apr 25
  If you wanna try it, feel free to send a mail to support@one-sec.app – we will invite you to Testflight for you to try then!
- Olly Stedall
  •
  May 11
  I think this is a great feature, but there are a couple of issues I can see:
  This is best used a supplementary intervention type that you see occasionally, alongside the normal purely phone-based interventions. You wouldn’t want this as the only intervention you ever see.
  You should be able to limit when this intervention is used based on a schedule. E.g. 10am - Sunset. (You don’t want it showing up when it’s dark.) Letting us choose Sunset rather than a specific time allows it to adapt to the time of year. You might also want to limit its usage based on the season depending on where you live. (Avoid the winter months.)
  You should also be able to restrict where it is used, as well. Perhaps you only want this intervention to be used in a location where you have access to grass, such as at home, but not when you are out and about or at the office. Perhaps let us choose one or more locations by placing a pin in an map and the intervention is only used when we are nearby that location.
  You should be able to restrict how often it repeats, too. If I just did it, I don’t want to have to go outside again 5 mins later. You should be able to choose how often it shows up again. E.g. At most once every hour. This way, if you successfully Touch Grass, you won’t be required to do it again for the next hour. It will offer you different intervention types until then.
  What if it is raining/snowing? Could there be a way to restrict whether it is used based on the current weather at your location. E.g. Only use when temperature is above 5°C and it is not raining/snowing at your location. It is not much use if the ground is covered in snow, and perhaps you want to avoid having to touch grass when it is pouring with rain outside.
  The alternative is to simply let you skip the intervention in favor of another one, but that kind of defeats the point of it. If it gives the option to skip it, then you likely will skip it. The goal is to force you to touch grass, with no ability to skip it, but only at a time/location that is practical, and when the weather outside is suitable.
  For what its worth, given the complexity of creating this, I think it could be definitely offered as an addon to the the standard subscription, if that is one of the blocks to developing it. Perhaps a One Sec Premium price tier could include a bunch of more advanced features such as this one.