Forest is one of the best-known apps in this category, and fairly so: its gamified virtual forest, and its genuine partnership with real tree-planting organisations, has made staying off your phone feel less like punishment and more like tending something. It's a well-designed, well-loved app with a reported user base in the tens of millions since its 2014 launch, and it's worth being precise about what kind of tool it actually is, because it's a meaningfully different one from a blocker, whatever its polish and popularity. That popularity and polish are worth taking at face value — Forest didn't become one of the best-known names in this category by accident, and its design genuinely holds up against much better-funded competitors.
What Forest actually does
You start a Forest session and a virtual tree begins growing; if you leave the app to use your phone before the session ends, the tree dies. That's the entire mechanism — Forest doesn't block your other apps by default, it simply tracks whether you left, and shows you the consequence as a dead tree in your forest afterward. Paid tiers and the browser extension add small variations like a Time Guard across multiple apps, and a genuine real-world tie-in funds actual tree planting through partner organisations as you use the app over time, so a forest full of dead trees at least isn't entirely wasted. Forest's browser extension version extends the same tree-growing mechanic to desktop browsing, and its "Time Guard" feature on paid tiers lets one session track multiple apps at once rather than just a single flagged one.
Where Forest is honestly the better pick
Forest's gamification is genuinely well-built, and the real-tree-planting tie-in gives sustained use a tangible, verifiable payoff that no quiz question can match — that's a real strength, not a marketing gloss, and it's independently confirmed rather than just a claim on Forest's own site. For anyone who responds better to a visual, cumulative reward than to being stopped at the door, Forest's approach is doing something Mr. Grummel isn't trying to do at all, and a full, thriving virtual forest built up over months is a genuinely satisfying thing to look back on. It's also simply a pleasant app to open, in a category where a lot of competitors lean on guilt or urgency — Forest's tone is closer to gardening than discipline, and that alone is a real design achievement worth crediting on its own terms.
| Feature | Forest | Mr. Grummel |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | iOS, Android, Chrome extension | iOS & Android (in development) |
| Core mechanism | Honor-system commitment device — a virtual tree dies if you leave the app during a session | Actually blocks the flagged app; answer a quiz question to unlock |
| Blocks the flagged app by default? | No — you can freely use other apps at any time; only the tree is affected | Yes |
| Physical hardware required? | No | No |
| Price | $3.99 one-time on iOS; free with ads or $1.99 one-time on Android; optional Forest Plus subscription for extras | Not yet announced — join the waiting list |
The one mechanical difference that actually matters
This is the clearest contrast in this whole comparison set, and it's worth stating plainly rather than softening it for either app's sake: Forest doesn't enforce anything. There's no lock, no permission check, nothing standing between you and the app you meant to avoid — only a symbolic consequence you see afterward, once the moment of temptation has already passed either way. Mr. Grummel works the other way around: the app is actually blocked, and getting back in costs you a right answer, not just a bad conscience about a dead tree you'll probably forget about within the hour. That gap is worth sitting with rather than glossing over, precisely because Forest is otherwise such a well-made app — good design and real enforcement are two separate questions, and it's possible for an app to excel at one while genuinely not attempting the other at all.
Who should pick which
If a visual reward and a small twinge of guilt are genuinely enough to keep you on track, and you like the idea of real trees getting planted as a side effect of a habit you were trying to build anyway, Forest is a well-loved tool doing exactly what it's built to do, at a fair one-time price. If you've noticed that guilt alone doesn't actually stop you — that you check the dead tree, feel briefly bad, and open the app anyway — that's the specific gap an actual block, backed by three questions you have to get right, is built to close. It's also worth trying Forest first if you've never used any blocker before, since its low one-time price and genuine charm make it a low-risk way to find out whether gamified motivation works for you at all before spending more on a stricter tool. It's also worth trying Forest even if you eventually move to something stricter, since the habit of consciously starting a session at all, tree or no tree, is itself a useful first step before adding real enforcement on top of it.