Hank Green’s new app, Focus Friend, just hit #1 on the U.S. App Store — beating out TikTok, Instagram, and even ChatGPT.
It’s not a social network, a viral game, or a new AI chatbot.
It’s an anti-app app — a productivity timer where a little bean guilts you into putting your phone down.
Focus, or the Bean Suffers
You set a timer. Your bean gets to work knitting socks.
Touch your phone before the timer’s up? The bean drops its stitches and looks disappointed.
Stay focused? You earn socks, which can be traded in for furniture and posters to decorate your bean’s room.
“It’s hacking the brain,” Hank explained in a recent video. “My responsibility to myself is weirdly not as significant as it is to this fake being that lives in my phone.”
#1 On The App Store
Focus Friend had a quiet soft launch earlier this summer. But when Hank posted about it on TikTok and Instagram last week, it exploded.
Within days, the app outpaced billion-dollar companies.
“People are so hungry for a way to be more in control of their attention” Hank said. “We don’t like that we’ve let others control it for so long.”
The app has a few key hooks:
- Playful, not punishing — think Tamagotchi for focus, not digital drill sergeant.
- Ad-free by design — users can buy skins like “Kitt-ney Bean” or even Hank Bean instead.
- Functional — can integrate with Screen Time to actually block apps.
Even Hank’s brother John Green is hooked: “There’s just something about me that doesn’t want to disappoint the bean.”
Our Take
Hank Green has done this before.
From Crash Course to SciShow, Vlogbrothers to Project For Awesome — Hank has spent years turning ideas into movements.
"If you give Hank Green three free hours he will invent a new business," John Green said.
That history means when Hank launches something new, millions of people pay attention.
Focus Friend isn’t just a hit app — it’s the proof that creators with deep trust and long-built communities can move their audiences anywhere, even into markets dominated by tech giants.
Because when Hank Green tells people to care about a bean knitting socks, they do.