Applatch helps users lock addictive apps to achieve good mental health

You agree that it is almost impossible for most smartphone users to focus on work or studies without the urge to be connected to their phones, which is often a distraction triggered by social media.

On a global scale, research shows that 75.4% of smartphone users experience the irrational fear of being without their smartphones, scientifically known as “Nomophobia”.

Applatch CEO Opaleye Olabamiji Samson as well as Bolakale Mallick, COO (and Head of Legal & Compliance) were both victims of smartphone and social media addiction and in search of a solution, ‘Applatch’ was founded, which is simply a mobile app that helps lock addictive apps on your phone for a period of time to help you be more productive and maintain healthy mental health.

We know what you’re thinking, “I can easily just unlock the app”.

No, you can’t – it’s really not that simple.

Your chosen accountability partner must give you permission by giving you a code to pause or end the currently locked session. For every complete locked session, you will also help an African child in need through school. Applatch is currently only available here on the Google Play Store for now, but it will be available on iOS in the near future.

It is clear that the world is going through an intense phase of smartphone addiction that has increased rapidly since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main problems associated with social media addiction are loss of valuable time, low productivity, lack of parental control and high depression rates.

The founders at Applatch decided to design the product as a true solution to combat these problems. This challenge led the two friends and co-founders to engage Adekola Akano as the third co-founder and CTO who is an expert in developing android and iOS mobile apps for startups in various industries.

Before designing Applatch, the co-founders embarked on on-the-ground user acceptance research, engaged Millennials and GenZs, and then fed their feedback into the product design phase. The co-founders also read through hundreds of complaints from users of existing products, they also did social listening to understand how people struggle with app addiction and what they would consider a true solution.

The data analysis conclusion from the research helped determine the features for Applatch’s MVP which currently has 3 locking features; ‘Lock now’, ‘Lock by daily limit’ and ‘Schedule Lock’. It also has a feature that allows users to track their overall phone usage analytics.

Users who want to immediately lock distracting apps for a period of time use the “Lock Now” feature. A user using ‘Lock with daily limit’ wants a specific app or set of distracting apps to be locked after using it for a certain specific number of hours per day, for example you want Snapchat to be locked after using it for 2 hours in one day, then your daily limit will be 2 hours and you will no longer have access to it for the rest of the day.

If you’re big on productivity and you live a routine life, you’ll probably use the ‘Schedule Lock’ feature more, it allows you to schedule lock sessions into the future and you can set the day and time a lock session should start and quit, you can decide to repeat the session every day or choose a few days a week if that’s your preference.

Applatch has a feature that allows the user to track total analysis of phone usage, showing the total number of times you unlock the phone, average daily screen time, the apps you spend the most time on and show the average duration, as well as the time of day you spend the most time on a particular app.

The social cause associated with completing locked sessions is funded by international foundations that are big on education and mental health. The grants from these foundations are used to support the education of African children who are in need. The vision of CEO Samson Opaleye is to ensure that a minimum of 500 African children who are less privileged will be sponsored through school from primary to tertiary level. Users can lock addictive apps, become more productive and indirectly help sponsor a child in need through school. You can follow Applatch’s journey by checking out their social media @getapplatch or visiting their website www.applatch.com