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From Project Flânerie · Back Room Strategies

umwelt

Notice the world around you. A small Android app that sends one quiet question when you’ve been scrolling.

um·welt

From biologist Jakob von Uexküll’s 1909 concept — the slice of reality an organism actually perceives, the world its senses reach. A bat’s umwelt is a map made of echoes. Yours is shaped by sight and scent, sound and texture. The app is an attempt to refresh that slice.

One quiet question.

When you’ve been scrolling for a while, Umwelt sends a single small prompt. An answer if you feel like writing one. Nothing else.

Outward, never inward.

Questions are about what you can see, hear, smell, or touch — not how you feel. More than 450 questions across 23 contexts, some always-applicable, others tied to where you are, the time of day, or the season.

An answer archive.

Your written answers (and any photos you choose to attach) live in an anthology grouped by question. A record of what you’ve noticed, ordered by what you noticed it about.

How it works

You scroll.

Umwelt notices when you’ve been on a scrolling app for a while. It sees only that an app is on screen, never what’s inside it.

A question arrives.

Silent. No sound, no vibration. The interruption is purely visual — a single question waiting to be read or ignored.

You look up.

Or you don’t. A user who opens the app once a month is using it correctly.

umwelt+

A one-time $4.99 unlock that adds context-aware questions tied to time, season, and place; the answer archive, where your responses gather as an anthology grouped by question; photo attachments; and home and work designation. The free tier stays genuinely complete on its own — umwelt+ is for people who want to settle in.

What you don’t get

Now on Google Play

Free on Android. Umwelt+ is a one-time $4.99 unlock if you decide to settle in.

Get it on Google Play  ↗
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