17 October, 2024
Roots introduces a screen time app for tracking 'digital dopamine'
As the U.S. Surgeon General is calling for a warning label on social media sites, similar to those found on tobacco products, one startup is launching a set of new tools that put the power to fight app addiction into users’ own hands. Designed for iOS, Roots offers an improvement over traditional screen-time apps by measuring not just time spent on devices, but the quality of that time spent on different apps with its “digital dopamine” tracker. Other features let users lock themselves out of the most addictive apps and add reminders to obsessively stop scrolling through algorithmic social feeds, among other things.
Co-founded by entrepreneur Clint Jarvis, the idea for Roots came from his own experiences reaching a point of burnout in the startup world.
Initially, he tried to create a more balanced routine for himself by making time for things like meditation and getting outside, which later led him to begin work on a nature-based mindfulness app. However, while participating in the entrepreneur-in-residence program at Wildwood Ventures, the focus for the app shifted to address the more immediate problem of the unhealthy way people interact with their devices.
“If you just think about the mission of the product, it’s to help people find better balance with technology,” Jarvis said. “We live in a very digital world … our phones are incredible tools. But they’re also very addicting,” he says. “We need to think of the phone as more of a relationship. … How do we set boundaries?”
Roots is designed to help people get a better handle on what sort of apps are worth spending time on and which are not.
“Ten minutes on your Kindle is not the same as 10 minutes on Twitter [now called X],” Jarvis noted. “Digital dopamine gives you a way to actually quantify the impact of what you’re doing on your phone.”
This “digital dopamine” is a reference to the brain chemical also known as the “feel-good” hormone that can be triggered through the use of social media and other addicting apps.
With Roots, you can set better intentions, like how much time you want to spend scrolling, and when you want that behavior blocked. The built-in digital dopamine tracker measures the quality of your screen time across different apps and turns those into actionable insights that help you make decisions about your use of technology.
The app features a handful of tools to break the cycle of scrolling, including standard things like downtime scheduling and app limits by specific apps or categories. The app integrates with Apple’s Screen Time API to help configure some of these settings.
However, it also goes a step further with things like a “Monk Mode” feature that lets you get serious about stopping your scroll by offering the ability to set limits and blocks that even you can’t override. You can’t even log out of Roots, change your phone’s date and time, or use other workarounds to bypass this particular feature. In beta testing, users liked this mode as it finally allowed them to set a hard limit on their more addictive apps.
Roots also offers a “balance score” that quantifies phone use in a personalized manner, to help you see where and how you can improve. Over time, Roots may add some sort of leaderboard that lets people see how they compare with others, too.
Another feature can pop up as a reminder to stop scrolling, which you can customize with personalized suggestions for other activities, like reading a book, spending time with family, going for a walk and more.
The freemium app monetizes through in-app subscriptions of $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year. The paid plans offer more advanced features like the Monk Mode and the digital dopamine report, among other things.
As you use Roots, you can build streaks as you stay under your screen time limits, which lets you earn rewards, like cheat days. Premium subscribers who practice good habits will also be gifted a physical scroll stopper, which introduces a “speed bump” you can place over your phone — similar to something like a Livestrong bracelet or rubber band. The scroll stopper makes you rethink scrolling apps when you pick up your phone.
In beta tests, Roots helped the average user reduce their screen time by 2 hours per day, Jarvis said.
Though Roots began as a solo project by Jarvis, now CEO, the app today is co-founded by others including Head of Design Pontus Wellgraf, who previously worked on design projects for MasterClass, Netflix, Microsoft, Huawei, Samsung and Ford; Head of User Experience Vikram Chauhan, who also founded Quiet Parks International, a nonprofit focused on reducing noise pollution and saving quiet spaces in nature; and Head of Development Marcin Czech.
The startup is backed by $550,000 in pre-seed funding from Wildwood Ventures and other Atlanta-area angel investors.
Roots introduces a screen time app for tracking 'digital dopamine'
As the U.S. Surgeon General is calling for a warning label on social media sites, similar to those found on tobacco products, one startup is launching a set of new tools that put the power to fight app addiction into users’ own hands. Designed for iOS, Roots offers an improvement over traditional screen-time apps by measuring not just time spent on devices, but the quality of that time spent on different apps with its “digital dopamine” tracker. Other features let users lock themselves out of the most addictive apps and add reminders to obsessively stop scrolling through algorithmic social feeds, among other things.
Co-founded by entrepreneur Clint Jarvis, the idea for Roots came from his own experiences reaching a point of burnout in the startup world.
Initially, he tried to create a more balanced routine for himself by making time for things like meditation and getting outside, which later led him to begin work on a nature-based mindfulness app. However, while participating in the entrepreneur-in-residence program at Wildwood Ventures, the focus for the app shifted to address the more immediate problem of the unhealthy way people interact with their devices.
“If you just think about the mission of the product, it’s to help people find better balance with technology,” Jarvis said. “We live in a very digital world … our phones are incredible tools. But they’re also very addicting,” he says. “We need to think of the phone as more of a relationship. … How do we set boundaries?”
Roots is designed to help people get a better handle on what sort of apps are worth spending time on and which are not.
“Ten minutes on your Kindle is not the same as 10 minutes on Twitter [now called X],” Jarvis noted. “Digital dopamine gives you a way to actually quantify the impact of what you’re doing on your phone.”
This “digital dopamine” is a reference to the brain chemical also known as the “feel-good” hormone that can be triggered through the use of social media and other addicting apps.
With Roots, you can set better intentions, like how much time you want to spend scrolling, and when you want that behavior blocked. The built-in digital dopamine tracker measures the quality of your screen time across different apps and turns those into actionable insights that help you make decisions about your use of technology.
The app features a handful of tools to break the cycle of scrolling, including standard things like downtime scheduling and app limits by specific apps or categories. The app integrates with Apple’s Screen Time API to help configure some of these settings.
However, it also goes a step further with things like a “Monk Mode” feature that lets you get serious about stopping your scroll by offering the ability to set limits and blocks that even you can’t override. You can’t even log out of Roots, change your phone’s date and time, or use other workarounds to bypass this particular feature. In beta testing, users liked this mode as it finally allowed them to set a hard limit on their more addictive apps.
Roots also offers a “balance score” that quantifies phone use in a personalized manner, to help you see where and how you can improve. Over time, Roots may add some sort of leaderboard that lets people see how they compare with others, too.
Another feature can pop up as a reminder to stop scrolling, which you can customize with personalized suggestions for other activities, like reading a book, spending time with family, going for a walk and more.
The freemium app monetizes through in-app subscriptions of $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year. The paid plans offer more advanced features like the Monk Mode and the digital dopamine report, among other things.
As you use Roots, you can build streaks as you stay under your screen time limits, which lets you earn rewards, like cheat days. Premium subscribers who practice good habits will also be gifted a physical scroll stopper, which introduces a “speed bump” you can place over your phone — similar to something like a Livestrong bracelet or rubber band. The scroll stopper makes you rethink scrolling apps when you pick up your phone.
In beta tests, Roots helped the average user reduce their screen time by 2 hours per day, Jarvis said.
Though Roots began as a solo project by Jarvis, now CEO, the app today is co-founded by others including Head of Design Pontus Wellgraf, who previously worked on design projects for MasterClass, Netflix, Microsoft, Huawei, Samsung and Ford; Head of User Experience Vikram Chauhan, who also founded Quiet Parks International, a nonprofit focused on reducing noise pollution and saving quiet spaces in nature; and Head of Development Marcin Czech.
The startup is backed by $550,000 in pre-seed funding from Wildwood Ventures and other Atlanta-area angel investors.
Screen Skinz raises $1.5M seed to create custom screen protectors
Clay Canning had an idea while in high school: smartphone screen protectors that featured logos, right on the screen.
He later connected with Rashaun Brown, who was working in sports and licensing at the time, and the idea for Screen Skinz was born.
“We both understood the opportunity and complemented each other’s weakness,” Brown, the company’s CEO, told TechCrunch. “In December 2022, I resigned from my job to pursue building Screen Skinz with Clay full-time.”
Now, Screen Skinz can officially announce the closing of a $1.5 million seed round led by South Loop Ventures and Abo Ventures.
The company produces custom, patent-pending phone screen protectors that feature personalized logos or slogans that are visible when the phone screen is black and then disappear when the phone is in use. Customers can create their own designs or pick from the company’s existing catalog.
Phone accessories have always been a massive market, with the global screen protector market alone worth an estimated $51 billion as of 2023.
Screen Skinz already holds creative licenses with various big-name brands, working with organizations such as the NFL and NBA and entertainment brands like Marvel and the WWE.
The latest fundraise allowed Screen Skinz to move manufacturing from Asia to the U.S., where it could more easily control its supply chain.
The company is looking to double down on the screen protection industry, and though it currently only focuses on smartphones, there is a plan to one day expand to making screen protectors for tablets. “With our IP, we can essentially develop screen protection for any mobile device that has use for a screen protector and features a backlit display,” Brown said.
Brown described Screen Skinz’s fundraising process as “different,” stating that it took the company about a year to close its seed round. Brown and Canning intentionally took their time, as they also sought to refine their supply chain and prepare inventory for a mass go-to-market. “We wanted to do the work of selling a realistic vision to investors,” Brown said.
Screen Skinz met its co-lead investor, Abo Ventures, through Brown’s network from when he worked at Texas A&M. They then met South Loop Ventures while participating in DivInc’s Sports Tech Accelerator in Houston.
Michelle Micone, the former SVP of consumer products at NFL and Hasbro, said she liked that the team had a unique concept and also figured out the manufacturing and logistics of producing it. “Customers want a high level of personalization, but it’s really, really hard to deliver on time and at a reasonable price. Screen Skinz has that formula, and I wanted to be part of it,” she told TechCrunch.
Other investors in the round include Brent Montgomery, the CEO of Wheelhouse Entertainment, alongside Wayne Pfeffer and Brendan O’Donnel, former directors of worldwide mobile accessory products at Apple. Pfeffer, in particular, was also sold on the idea of making screen protectors more personalizable. “For years, personalizing your device was limited to the case,” he told TechCrunch. “When I saw the evolution to the front on a screen protector, I was sold!”
Brown said the company could look to raise as early as next year again. Screen Skinz has some partnerships lined up and is focused on customer acquisition and deepening licensing relationships.
Google Play preps a new full-screen app discovery feature and adds more developer tools
Though overshadowed by AI news this year, Google’s I/O 2024 developer conference also focuses on what’s new for those building for Android. This year, it’s Google Play that’s getting attention, with a new discovery feature for apps, new ways to acquire users, updates to Play Points, and other enhancements to developer-facing tools like the Google Play SDK Console and Play Integrity API, among other things.
Of particular interest to developers is something called the Engage SDK, which will introduce a way for app makers to showcase their content to users in a full-screen, immersive experience that’s personalized to the individual user. Google says this isn’t a surface that users can see at this time, however.
Instead, the Engage SDK is being offered as a developer preview so developers can leverage the upcoming surface to highlight the most important content from users’ installed apps, personalized recommendations and promotions. If the user already has the app installed, it can highlight the most important content from those apps. If the user doesn’t have the app installed, developers can use this space to show off their app’s most compelling features. It can also offer personalized promotions and deals.
Developers will need to integrate with the Engage SDK — something that takes about a week to complete — to tap into this new feature. For now, the Engage SDK is offered as an invite-only preview.
Play Points, the Play ecosystem’s rewards program, is used to launch coupons, discounts and exclusive in-game items. Now it’s also easier to monitor these promotions through the Play Console, so developers can better optimize their campaigns.
Google also made it easier to integrate with Play Games Services and expanded its Google Play Games on PC program to more than 140 markets. The program’s catalog now includes over 3,000 titles, the company noted.
For SDK developers, Google is opening up its SDK Console to all SDK makers, as long as they’re distributed by a canonical Maven repository source that Google can verify. The SDK Console, first launched in 2021, aims to help SDK makers improve their performance by offering tools like crash reporting, insights, and the ability to communicate with developers more directly. With the expansion, it will now also be open to smaller SDKs and open source SDKs that weren’t previously supported. That will allow a broader range of SDK makers to provide developers with tools to update to SDK versions that fix bugs and issues and comply with the latest Play Store guidelines.
Developers are also able to share crash reports and ANR (Application Not Responding) errors with SDK owners to help them improve.
The Play Integrity API, launched in 2022, is also being updated. The API helps developers ensure that user actions and server requests are coming from an unmodified version of their app as a means of protecting against risk and fraud. Now it will add three new features. One is the public beta of “app access risk,” which lets an app know if another app is capturing the screen, displaying overlays or controlling the device. (It won’t be triggered by features used for accessibility, however.) The API can also now respond with a Play Protect verdict, which lets developers know if Play Protect is turned on or if it has found any known malware on the device. Another feature, “recent device activity,” will let developers detect devices making a high volume of requests, which could be a sign of automated traffic or an attack, says Google.
To help developers acquire and engage users, the Play Store is rolling out custom store listings, which allow developers to change their listings and optimize them for different audiences. They can also now create listings based on what keywords users are searching for and the Play Console will make keyword suggestions. Google’s Gemini AI can also be used to help write app descriptions.
Following other changes to make the Play Store more useful to those on different form factors, like tablets or watches, the listings can now display screenshots, ratings, and reviews specific to each form factor. This will also help when users filter apps by device type or explore the page dedicated to apps for “other devices.”
Developers who use deep links to their app — or links that direct to a particular page inside their app — can now update those links without submitting an app update for review. Instead, they’ll be able to use the deep links patching feature in the Play Console to experiment with different links and then push them live.
The company also ran down various changes it’s made to Play Store commerce, including the support for UPI in India, Pix in Brazil, the ability for parents to approve purchases for kids within a Google Family setup, and, in India, the ability to ask a family member or friend outside of your family group to purchase an app or in-app product. The latter is handled by sharing a payment link through a text or email.
Google noted it’s automatically updating prices on the Play Store to reflect currency fluctuations against the U.S. dollar and is now letting developers price products as high as USD $999.99 (or the local equivalent). Developers can also use a new Play Billing Lab app to test features to improve the customer experience around one-time purchases and subscriptions.
Its installment subscriptions feature, which has been in early access in select markets, allows customers the ability to pay over time for long-term subscriptions. So far, the program has seen an increase of 8% in total subscription sign-ups and 4% in user spending, but Google didn’t say when it would roll out more broadly.
To take advantage of features, developers will need to upgrade to Play Billing Library 7.0 later this month, Google said.
