You know that feeling when you pick up your phone to check one thing and suddenly you're three hours deep into TikTok? Yeah, Hank Green and mobile game developer Bria Sullivan felt that too. So they did something about it.
And accidentally created the most popular free app in the App Store.
Meet Focus Friend, the app that's currently sitting at #1 in the US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand with over 740,000 downloads. But can it get you to stop using your phone?
The Bean That Broke the Internet
The app centers around an adorable animated bean character who just wants to knit in peace. When you set a focus timer, the bean gets to work on his knitting.
Stay focused, and he creates cute socks and decorations for his room. But if you break focus and open another app? His knitting gets ruined, and the little guy gets visibly sad. Turns out, people really don't want to disappoint a knitting bean.
"I don't think we realized how bad people didn't want to disappoint this little bean," says Sullivan, founder of Honey B Games who built the app alongside Green.
The whole thing started over dinner when Sullivan mentioned that mobile apps could be the next frontier for creator merchandise.
Green, known for his educational YouTube content and science communication, followed up on the idea, and they spent the next year and a half building something together.
What makes this story special isn't just the success, but rather, how it happened. This wasn't some venture-backed startup with a massive team. Green fronted the costs for a few contractors (an animator, composer, and artist), but mostly it was just Sullivan coding away on a passion project.
"This was just something that he and I have been working on for the past year and a half, and we did it out of the love of wanting to see something like this come to fruition," Sullivan explains.
Why Focus Friend Works When Other Apps Don't
The smartphone addiction market isn't new. We've seen everything from "dumbphones" making a comeback to apps that literally make you touch grass before scrolling TikTok. But Focus Friend hit on something different.
Instead of being preachy or aggressive about phone usage, it uses guilt, but the "good kind". The kind that comes from caring about a cute character. Think Duolingo's persistent owl or the Tamagotchis of the '90s.
The app offers a free version with "deep focus mode" that blocks almost everything except calls and messages. Want more control? The pro version lets you customize which apps get blocked and comes with faster sock-earning and premium decorations. At $1.99/month, $14.99/year, or $29.99 for lifetime access, the lifetime option is proving most popular.
Here's what's wild about this whole story: Green and Sullivan thought they were building a "niche, cute little app" for his loyal fanbase. They had no idea it would explode like this.
"Hank and I thought this was going to be a niche, cute little app," Sullivan says. "We were hoping that some people would like it, and thought his super loyal fans would probably be the ones who were interested in it."
Instead, they tapped into something much bigger. The growing desire for healthier relationships with our devices, wrapped in an approach that doesn't make people feel bad about their habits.
What This Means for App Developers and Creators
Focus Friend's success shows a few key things:
Passion projects can become breakout hits. Sometimes the best products come from solving your own problems without overthinking market size.
Simple concepts with great execution win. A knitting bean isn't revolutionary, but the execution and emotional connection are spot-on.
There's a huge market for digital wellness tools that don't require completely abandoning modern technology.
Creator-developer collaborations work. Green brought the audience and vision; Sullivan brought the technical skills. Neither could have done this alone.
The app's success also proves that sometimes the most effective solution to a tech problem uses more tech, not less. While dumbphones and digital detoxes work for some people, Focus Friend offers a middle ground that feels more realistic for most of us.
In a world of complex growth hacking strategies and million-dollar marketing budgets, Focus Friend's rise to #1 shows that sometimes the best approach is surprisingly simple: build something you actually want to use, make it delightful, and give people a reason to care.
Not every dinner conversation turns into an App Store hit, but when two passionate people decide to solve a real problem together, good things can happen. Even if it involves making people emotionally invested in a knitting bean.
