You must stay focused. You cannot open TikTok, Instagram, or whatever little phone games you like to play. If you fail, you will make an anthropomorphic bean very sad, because its knitting project depends on your ability to stay focused.
This is the premise of Focus Friend, a productivity app created by Honey B Games and Hank Green, the longtime online creator, entrepreneur, educator, and sock salesman. Though the app was soft-launched last month, Focus Friend is only now gaining momentum on the App Store charts—likely because Green and his brother, author John Green, have been posting about it. The app has reached No. 4 among all free apps and No. 2 among productivity apps.
Focus Friend, available on iOS and Android, has the structure of a typical productivity app. It allows you to set a timer on your phone, temporarily preventing you from opening certain apps. On iOS, the “Deep Focus Mode” connects to your screen time settings, where you can choose which apps to block.
What sets Focus Friend apart is that it assigns you a new friend—a little bean—which you can name, like Garbanzo, Susan Bean Anthony, or Eda (short for Edamame). Your bean needs help focusing on its knitting, and it can only do so if you avoid opening distracting apps. If you successfully complete your focus session, your bean rewards you with in-game points (socks), which you can use to buy decorations for its room. The only thing more motivating than helping a bean knit is buying it a cute poster for its wall.
Focus Friend shares similarities with Finch, a popular self-care app that encourages healthy habits by giving users a virtual bird companion. Like Tamagotchis of the past, these apps tap into our desire to care for a digital creature by completing tasks that benefit us.
Focus Friend is functional as a free app, but you can pay to customize your bean with different skins, such as a “Kitt-ney Bean” (a cat-like bean) or a jelly bean. There’s also a subscription that lets your bean knit scarves, which can be exchanged for premium decorations. Hank Green has stated that Focus Friend aims to be an ad-free experience, as the mobile ad ecosystem is flawed. However, the app still needs to generate revenue to compensate the team behind it.
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