Friendships, gently nurtured.Add the people who matter as flowers in your garden. Tend to each one with a message, a catch‑up, a call. HiBud watches the seasons so you don't have to — and quietly nudges when the soil's getting dry.
HiBud is built around a single quiet idea — that friendships, like flowers, do better when someone is paying attention. The app is a place to pay attention.
Choose someone you'd like to keep close. Pick a flower for them — a tulip for the one who travels, a sunflower for the loud one, an orchid for the quiet one. They'll sit in your garden, waiting to be tended.
a small naming ceremony, basicallyspecimen 01 · plantingSend a message. Plan a coffee. Pick up the phone. HiBud syncs quietly with your calendar so a real catch‑up counts as a proper soak — and the smaller things still count too. Each act of care brightens the flower.
a text counts. a long walk counts more.specimen 02 · wateringIf a friend hasn't been tended for a while, their flower softens — petals lose colour, leaves bow gently. A small notification arrives, never urgent, never red‑dot, never gamified. Just an honest reminder: it's been a while.
no streaks. ever.
A small widget shows the corner of your garden you most need to see today — one or two flowers, the people behind them, the time since you last spoke. Open the app to tend, or don't. The garden waits patiently. It's only ever yours.
private to you. always.
HiBud is an iOS app that turns your closest friendships into a garden. Each person you care about becomes a flower; tending to them — a text, a coffee, a long phone call — keeps their flower in bloom.
It's slow software. There are no streaks, no scoreboards, no social feed. The whole thing lives privately on your phone. Nobody knows you've added them.
Friendships, like flowers, do better when someone is paying attention. The app is a place to pay attention.— from the brief, scribbled in a notebook
Each thing HiBud does is in service of the same idea: making it easier — and gentler — to keep in touch.
A small widget keeps the corner of your garden that needs you most always in view — one or two flowers, the people behind them, the time since you last spoke.
Give HiBud read-only access to your calendar and any catch-up — coffee, dinner, walk, call — counts as a proper soak. The data never leaves your device.
When the soil's getting dry, you'll feel it before you see it. A soft notification — never urgent, never a number — reads simply: it's been a while.
No accounts. No social layer. No analytics on your friends. The garden lives on your phone alone — and the people in it are never told they're part of one.
Each flower has space for the small things you want to remember — that they're moving, that the cat's name is Olive, that you owe them a book. Quiet ledger, always to hand.
Not everyone reaches for a flower. A future version will let you pick the creature that fits — a cat that wanders off, a dog that needs walking. The garden expands. We're not in a hurry.
Some friendships are perennials, some are annuals, some need to be replanted in a different sun. HiBud is just a quiet way of remembering they're alive.
— a small thought, by the studio
HiBud is the first product from CTRLSZE — a small independent studio in Sydney, operated by AURACO PTY LTD. We make a small number of things slowly, with a strong opinion about each one.
The studio site is the opposite of this page on purpose: crisp, monospaced, cobalt-on-paper. HiBud gets to be soft because that's what it's for. Both are true.
ctrlsze.studioHiBud is being built quietly. When it's ready, we'll send a single, careful email — no marketing drip, no countdown timers. Just "the garden is open."
One email when iOS launches. Coming soon.