A new app called Sabbath is selling an ancient pitch to a modern, phone-addicted crowd: lock technology away for one sacred day a week.

The app, launched earlier this month by Dig Wells — the makers of the reading app Matter and the habit tracker Halo — is designed to help users unplug from sundown to sundown on either Saturday or Sunday. Users pick the apps they wish to block at no cost, while a paid tier adds custom weekday blocks, such as a daily 5-7 p.m. family time or an hour for morning meditation. 

Founder Ben Springwater told Jewish Insider the app draws inspiration from Shabbat. “I’m Jewish and I grew up celebrating Shabbat with my family,” he said. His family didn’t keep a strict Sabbath — they drove and used electronics — but Friday night dinner and prayers was “a cornerstone of my life growing up” and “a way to anchor the week,” he recalled. Springwater has since built a similar Shabbat practice with his wife and two young children.

“I have a startup, I work hard and I’m always online. I’m on X a lot. I’ve increasingly been feeling like I need a way to introduce some boundaries and a little bit of rest and recovery into my life,” Springwater told JI.

He said that notion drew him to the idea of observing Shabbat beyond a Friday night meal —- though he wasn’t ready to go full in. 

“I like having my phone with me on the weekends and being able to communicate with my friends,” said Springwater. “I don’t want to create impositions that don’t allow me to enjoy the day. But I don’t want to be checking X when I’m out at the park with my family. The rule that I created for myself was no X and no work apps, the ones I compulsively want to turn to.” 

Already, there were several popular apps on the market that have built businesses around tracking screentime and helping people block distracting social media. There are also physical devices, such as Brick, that disable apps of a user’s choosing. 

“We didn’t want to just add another stone to the pile, but I had gone on my own journey with the Sabbath and saw there was something very simple, powerful and easy about this ancient system of taking one day of rest. So what if we created an app totally oriented around that practice?” said Springwater. 

The name Sabbath “popped to mind immediately,” he told JI. “We did talk about how explicitly we want to make this app about religion. Where we came was that we want to connect with the religious tradition. There should be religious undertones but we don’t want to make it denominational.”  

The Sabbath app — which Springwater calls “Shabbat with training wheels” — offers an accessible experience for everyone from culturally observant Jews to wellness enthusiasts who may miss the Jewish reference.  

“It helps someone who is Sabbath-curious but can’t make that big of a commitment,” said Springwater. “It’s trying to make a bigger tent, get more people to experience some of the benefits and virtues of what Shabbat offers.”  

Springwater’s idea has received support even from Jews who already keep Shabbat. 

“The world of technology continues to evolve and change at breakneck speeds,” said Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, the director of Tech Tribe, a New York-based affiliate of Chabad Young Professionals that serves as a gathering place for Jews working in the tech sector. “Even while the trajectory it propels us into continues to remain unknown, I firmly believe that as a society we are capable of using tech — be it social media, AI or whatever else comes our way — for positive and uplifting purposes.” 

“But to do that, it’s critical that we align our own internal system with positive and redemptive forces,” Lightstone told JI. “Taking a break from the digital distractions that surround us, as Ben’s App Sabbath encourages, is a key step towards recentering our inner algorithm around the core values that we need to properly channel technology: Community, family, study and meaningful spiritual connection — to very literally touch grass.” 

The launch of the Sabbath app arrives just as observing a weekly day of rest — whether Jewish or Christian — has recently gained viral popularity. 

Facing terminal stage 4 pancreatic cancer, former U.S. Senator and University of Florida President Ben Sasse shared in recent interviews that he regrets not better honoring the Christian Sabbath. Supermodel Karlie Kloss, who converted to Judaism before marrying businessman Joshua Kushner, shared on a recent podcast that she does not drive or touch her phone on Shabbat. Outside of the religious sphere, tech entrepreneur and longevity biohacker Bryan Johnson frequently posts on X about digital minimalism, advocating for multi-day phone and social media fasts to improve health.  

Springwater said the role of his app is not to offer community or shape how people spend their time, but it does include a feature where users can add “friends,” the equivalent of Facebook connections, in order to create some accountability and mutual support. 

If a user wants to check Instagram while using Sabbath, they open the app and press “pause,” which requires them to type in a reason. “It introduces this friction so you can’t just open it in the heat of the moment, but you can still do it. There’s a balancing act, you don’t want to make it so impossible because in some cases someone might have to circumvent it,” said Springwater.  

“The reason that you type in to end your Sabbath is then visible to your ‘friends’ on [the app]. At the end of Sabbath, you can see if someone had a perfect Sabbath or if they took two breaks. The social features are for accountability and support but they don’t facilitate some sense of community on the Sabbath,” he said.  

Springwater said that while fighting antisemitism by building cultural bridges was not the original goal for his app, that idea has grown on him since its launch. 

“One of the things that is so hopeful to me about the Sabbath is how crosscutting and universal it is. I’ve observed that a lot of different types of figures across the religious and cultural spectrum have been resonating with this idea. You can come at it with a very explicitly religious value system or a more secular value system, but you can find common cause in what this practice has to offer,” he said. 

“There are very few things that so many different types of people can agree on and think is a good thing and all get behind,” continued Springwater. “The World Cup was one of them — it feels like the practice of Sabbath is another.”