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Image Credits:urbazon / Getty Images6:00 AM PDT · July 8, 2026
WeWard, an app that offers users rewards for logging their steps, is launching a diagnostic called “Walking Mode” that allows users to restrict their usage of chosen apps until they deed a definite measurement count. The diagnostic is expected to motivate radical to locomotion portion besides helping them reduce their surface time, if that’s thing they’re looking to do.
If a idiosyncratic wants to scroll less connected TikTok oregon Instagram portion besides making definite they marque clip for a regular walk, they could restrict entree to the apps until they locomotion 3,000 steps, for example. The measurement goals and apps locked are customizable.
Until now, WeWard encouraged users to spell connected a locomotion by awarding them “Wards,” an in-app currency that tin beryllium exchanged for cash, acquisition cards, oregon donations. There’s besides a gamified leaderboard feature, truthful you tin prosecute successful immoderate gentle contention with your friends. But the summation of surface clip simplification features makes consciousness for the app, since galore users are looking for caller ways to bounds unnecessary telephone and societal media use.
Image Credits:WeWardWith backing from tennis prima and angel capitalist Venus Williams, the France-based app says that it has 30 cardinal users crossed 29 countries, including 4 cardinal U.S. users. The level besides says it has been shown to summation walking clip by astir 25%.
“We judge the adjacent procreation of products should beryllium designed to make healthier behaviors successful the existent world, not simply seizure much attention,” WeWard co-founder Yves Benchimol told TechCrunch. “Walking Mode is our publication to that vision, and we anticipation it inspires a broader speech astir mindful plan and however the manufacture defines success.”
WeWard says that users walk lone a fewer minutes per time successful the app, which it considers a affirmative statistic, since the app isn’t trying to monopolize attention.
While immoderate rewards apps money their payouts by collecting and selling idiosyncratic data to 3rd parties, WeWard says that it does not prosecute successful these practices. Instead, it makes wealth from in-app purchases, affiliate marketing, premium subscriptions, and advertising.
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Amanda Silberling is simply a elder writer astatine TechCrunch covering the intersection of exertion and culture. She has besides written for publications similar Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast astir net culture, with subject fabrication writer Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked arsenic a grassroots organizer, depository educator, and movie festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. successful English from the University of Pennsylvania and served arsenic a Princeton successful Asia Fellow successful Laos.
You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted connection astatine @amanda.100 connected Signal.
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