Saudi Forest clone: one person combined "focus by growing trees" with prayer times and a university leaderboard, and hit #3 on the Saudi Top Paid chart

A solo Saudi developer took Forest's mechanic as is and changed only three things: auto-pause at the call to prayer, university rankings, and everything from plants to copy localized to Saudi. Two months after launch it sits at #3 overall on the Saudi App Store Top Paid chart, #1 in the Productivity paid chart, priced at SAR 4.99 one-time. Anyone can build the mechanic. What made it take off are these three changes, so those are what's worth following, not the timer itself.

A pre-launch "how much do you trust me" post

On the morning of Sep 2026 3, a Saudi X user named بسّام (@punkive) first posted: "Friends, if I bring you a very impressive, historic app that's especially useful for students and daily learners, how much would you trust me?" Then came the formal introduction, each line with an emoji: 🇸🇦 "Saudi App", 🌳 "The more focused you are, the bigger your oasis", 📵 "Blocks distracting apps for you", 🕌 "Respects prayer times", 👥 "Focus together with friends".

The app is called ازرع (Azr3, meaning "to plant"). It had launched the day before, and the developer Mashal Mohammed has only this one app. By Nov 6 it had 435 ratings in Saudi Arabia, averaging 4.76 stars. From Oct 28 to Nov 6 it ranked daily between #2 and #4 on the Saudi overall Top Paid chart (App Store chart data). The paid apps around it are mostly old games like Minecraft, Pou, and Geometry Dash.

One user's five-star review from Oct 31 explains best why it caught on:

"I've tried a lot of focus apps, and this is number one, especially because of the university leaderboard. I got competitive and wanted to push our school up, so my study time went up."

What it actually is

You start a session (study, work, reading, whatever), put your phone aside, and when the time runs out a tree grows in your oasis. Leave mid-session and the tree dies. This is exactly like Forest from 2014. A post on Reddit's r/SaudiForSaudis was titled "ازرع (Saudi Forest)".

It differs in these ways:

• Prayer comes first. The app has built-in prayer times based on the Umm al-Qura calendar. You can't start a new focus session during the call to prayer, and the break during prayer doesn't count against your break allowance. The oasis sky changes color with prayer times, and if it's raining in your city, it rains in your oasis too.
• It's fully Saudi. The map is called the "Kingdom Oasis", split into regions like Najd, Hejaz, Asir, the East, and Oula. It grows local plants. An October update added a table of "Saudi desserts and dishes". The copy is written in Saudi dialect, and the last line of the store page reads "صُنع في السعودية" (Made in Saudi Arabia).
• Competition by school. Each university has a monthly ranking. A 1.3 update added city-vs-city and region-vs-region rankings for high school students.
• Study together. Study rooms support up to 40 people timing together. A room can turn on "shared fate": if one person quits, every tree in the room dies. After a session it generates a "session photo" with everyone's avatar and name, plus a "winner card" you can post to Stories in one tap.
• App locking. It uses the iOS Screen Time interface to lock distracting apps during work, study, and sleep hours, even without a focus session running.
• One-time purchase. SAR 4.99 (about $1.3 USD). The store page says "No ads, no subscriptions, pay once and get everything". Data is stored in the user's own iCloud. There are also in-app purchases, the top tier at SAR 49.99, but the store page doesn't clearly say what they include (unverified).

iOS only. Not found on Google Play.

Why now

It caught the school year. It launched on Sep 2, right when Saudi universities reopened. The official TikTok @azr3app was most active from mid-September to mid-October. A Sep 19 video naming King Saud University students got 220k views, an Oct 4 video got 100k views and 6,595 likes, and an Oct 14 video, "ما شاء الله everyone's using ازرع to study", got 71k views (TikTok, 11-06).

A second push in early November. Daily new Saudi ratings went from single digits at the end of October to 1 on Nov 3, then 34 and 66 and 59, before settling at 21 to 24 a day (App Store rating counts, daily). Just before this wave, on Oct 30, it released version 1.3, which the developer called "the biggest update since launch". In those days the official TikTok videos got only a thousand-plus views each, so the videos weren't what drove it. The likely explanation (inference) is that the new version added a rating prompt, and it coincided with university midterm exams.

The university leaderboard is both a feature and a video topic. The official account posts almost only "which university grinds hardest": naming King Saud University and Qassim University, stopping students on campus, and posting "congratulations to the champions". Every video carries #مذاكرة (studying), #جامعة (university), and #قدرات (Saudi university aptitude test), and it also rides an unrelated viral tag, #الشعب_الصيني_ماله_حل ("the Chinese people are hopeless"), to game recommendations. The schools that get named become ready-made communities: students repost, cheer for their school in the comments, and then go back into the app to rack up study hours. Version 1.3 added a dedicated landmark for aptitude-test prep groups called "عباقرة القدرات" (aptitude geniuses), built on the same idea.

Where users come from

Store search doesn't help much. The official help page has a line saying "Can't find it in the store? Search azr3", which suggests searching the Arabic name doesn't surface it, so traffic comes almost entirely from outside the store. We found no sign of ad buying, but that doesn't mean there wasn't any.

How much it earns

Not much. It has 440 ratings. Using typical rating rates for paid apps, Saudi Arabia probably sold a few thousand to 20,000 copies (est.), at roughly $1.1 each net. Total revenue over two months was likely between $5,000 and $25,000 (est., excluding in-app purchases). This isn't a big-money business. Its value is in proving a playbook.

It holds the top spots on the Top Paid chart. Half of that is its own work, and half is that the Saudi Top Paid bar is low: a few dozen new ratings a day is enough to reach the top 3. Being on the chart is itself exposure, and a low-price one-time purchase can sustain itself in a small market.

Who it's competing with

Haven't seen anyone copy it yet. The more interesting group is elsewhere: searching "focus + prayer" in the App Store in Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and the UAE turns up a run of Muslim focus apps launched in 2026: FocusDeen, Khushu, Prayer Pause, Aqbil, ImanGuard, Quran Pomodoro, mostly sitting at 0 to 5 ratings (App Store search, 11-06). A prayer-time lock screen alone doesn't sell. What made Azr3 take off was the sense of identity ("this is our own app") plus school-vs-school competitions. Prayer was just the hook that made it memorable.

If it were you

Verdict: Worth trying, but the money is small. Copy its playbook, not its features. Go to a Muslim student market where you are a local, and run the same play: "our own app + school rankings + short videos naming specific schools." Aim first to hold a spot on the local paid chart.

Who it suits: One or two people, at least one a local in the target country, ideally still in school or recently graduated, who knows which schools have rivalries and can make videos and copy in the local dialect. The iOS Screen Time APIs and synced timers aren't hard. One person could reach the level of its 1.3 version in three months. That's how it was built.

Who it doesn't suit: Non-locals trying to localize by translation. Students will spot that immediately, and "our own app" is this product's only real moat. If you want to head-to-head it in Saudi Arabia, it already holds that ground. If you want subscription revenue or big money, students paying a one-time $1 will make you think twice.

How to do it:

• Pick the country first. Look at two things: how high iPhone share is, and whether there's rivalry between universities. The Gulf states (UAE, Kuwait, Qatar) have many iPhones but small populations. Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey have many students but are mostly Android, so you'd need Google Play as well. Azr3 didn't do that.
• Copy its skeleton: tree-growing, prayer times based on the local calendar, app blocking, 40-person synced study rooms and "shared fate" mechanics, school and city rankings.
• Swap in local assets: plants, landmarks, food, dialect, exam names. Indonesia's UTBK, Turkey's YKS, Egypt's Thanaweya Amma can all be turned into landmark groups the way its "ability exam genius" does.
• Price as a low one-time purchase, and build the rating prompt in from day one. Push into the Top Paid chart early.

How to get users: Run an official TikTok and post at least five videos a week, each naming a specific school: "Is this how Saudi University students study?" "Who's #1 on the leaderboard this week?" Do street interviews outside campus gates. Ride local study hashtags and add a trending meme tag that day. Get a few student creators with a few thousand to 20,000 followers to feature it. On the day of launch, find a local account on X or in a Reddit local subreddit and post "our own app, made by one of us." Make sure the store name includes a short Latin-script name, so people can find it.

When to launch: 2027 January is end-of-term and semester transition in many countries. If you miss that, aim for the next back-to-school season: in the Northern Hemisphere that's 2027 from 8 to September. Indonesia and Malaysia have different terms, so work backward from the local academic calendar and launch two weeks before school starts.

Signs that would mean you read it wrong:

1. Azr3's daily new ratings in Saudi Arabia fell to single digits in December and dropped out of the top 20 on the overall paid chart. That suggests it was a back-to-school and exam-season spike, and students didn't stick.
2. It launched an Arabic version in Egypt or another Gulf country on its own and didn't take off in six months. That suggests the "Saudi identity" doesn't transfer. Even within the same language, copying doesn't work, and switching languages is harder still.
3. The reverse: Forest or a major brand focus app adds prayer times and school rankings. That means the window is closing. You either move faster or pick a country big companies won't bother with.
4. The first 10 videos you post naming schools don't get a single 50k views. That suggests local students don't share this kind of school rivalry meme, so this content approach won't work for you.