Grounded Is Live on the App Store

I built an app called Grounded. It’s live on the App Store as of today.

Grounded does one thing: when you’re overwhelmed, scattered, stuck, or spinning — you speak or type what’s going on, and it gives you one clear next step. Not a productivity framework. Not a 47-step system. Just a concrete place to start.

What it actually does

You open the app. You hit the big button. You say something like “I have six things half-started, my inbox is on fire, and I can’t focus on anything.” Grounded structures that mess into:

• One action to do right now
• One open loop to close
• One thing that can wait

That’s the protocol. There are seven grounding modes — Get Unstuck, Start My Day, Before Inbox, Switching Tasks, Calm Down, End My Day, Focus and Execute — or the app can auto-detect your mental state from what you said.

After you get your plan, there’s a timer you can start for the action. Pause it, resume it, bail if you need to. The timer keeps you honest without adding pressure.

The privacy choice

This was non-negotiable from day one. Everything stays on your device.

No account. No cloud. No tracking. No ads. Voice transcription happens on-device. AI plan generation uses Apple’s Foundation Models — on-device. Your sessions are stored locally. Nothing leaves your phone.

I know “privacy-first” is a marketing buzzword at this point. For Grounded it was an architectural constraint. People sharing their overwhelm, their stuck moments, their mental health struggles — that data has no business on anyone’s server.

How the AI works

On supported devices (iPhone 15 Pro and newer, roughly), Grounded uses Apple’s on-device intelligence to generate personalized plans. It reads what you actually said and produces specific actions tailored to your situation, not generic advice pulled from a template.

On older devices, you still get template-based plans — mode-specific and genuinely useful. Everyone gets value. The free tier is a complete grounding app, not a crippled demo.

The free version includes unlimited sessions with template plans, all 7 modes, voice input, and the timer. No subscription required.

Premium ($19.99/year or $49.99 lifetime) unlocks unlimited AI-generated personalized plans, ritual journaling, full session history, and Siri shortcuts. You get 5 free AI sessions to feel the difference before deciding.

What I learned shipping this

Two App Store rejections. Both instructive.

The first was about subscription disclosure — Apple wanted legal links on the paywall. Fair. Fixed it, resubmitted.

The second was about the recording indicator. The app captures voice through AVAudioEngine, and Apple’s reviewer on an iPad Air didn’t think the visual indicator was clear enough. The waveform was using random float values instead of real audio levels — cosmetic, not functional. That’s a real problem. If a user can’t tell they’re being recorded, the app shouldn’t ship.

The fix was straightforward: a prominent recording banner with a pulsing red dot, explicit “Recording” text, real audio-level feedback in the waveform, and keeping the screen awake during capture. But the lesson was bigger — don’t let cosmetic features masquerade as functional ones. If it looks like a recording indicator, it needs to actually indicate recording.

Who this is for

Grounded was built for the “I don’t know where to start” moment. Specifically:

• ADHD and executive function challenges
• Anxiety and overwhelm
• Task-switching paralysis
• Afternoon mental fog
• The general feeling of having too many threads and no clear next step

It’s not therapy. It’s not a replacement for professional help. (Crisis resources — 988 Lifeline, Crisis Text Line — are built in and surface when distress keywords are detected.) It’s a tool for the specific moment when your brain is stuck and you need one small, concrete thing to do next.

Try it

Grounded is free on the App Store. No account needed. Download it, open it, speak or type what’s happening, and see what one clear next step feels like.

Download Grounded on the App Store →

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Built with SwiftUI, Swift 6, targeting iOS 18+. All AI features run on-device via Apple Foundation Models.