New App Warns iPhone Users When Jump Scares Are Coming in Real Time

A British-born developer working alone out of California has built an iPhone app that does something no major streaming platform offers: it warns you before a jump scare arrives, in real time, while the movie is still playing.

The app is called Binge, created by Shihab Mehboob, who goes by @JPEGuin online and previously built the Mastodon client Mammoth and the AI news reader Bulletin. The App Store listing describes the project plainly as the work of "a team of one."

The warning system runs through Apple's Live Activities platform, which pushes real-time alerts to the iPhone Lock Screen and the Dynamic Island, the pill-shaped interactive zone at the top of the screen. Apple introduced the Dynamic Island with the iPhone 14 Pro in 2022 and extended it to all iPhone 15 models in 2023; Live Activities itself opened to developers with iOS 16.1. Other apps routinely use the feature for tracking food deliveries, Uber arrivals, and sports scores. Binge applies it to horror content.

Activating the feature is straightforward: tap a clock icon on the app's jump scares detail page when a movie begins. Users who would rather not be warned about every startle moment can filter the alerts to flag only "major" scares.

The feature addresses a genuine psychological pressure point. Modern horror films average roughly ten jump scares per movie, approximately one every ten minutes, according to researcher Mathias Clasen as cited by Euronews. Those moments trigger what psychologists call the "startle response," a reflexive, involuntary physical reaction. For viewers with higher baseline anxiety or stronger empathy responses, the effect lingers; research shows those individuals tend to experience prolonged stress from jump scares rather than the emotional resilience that other horror fans report gaining.

The jump scare warning is the headline feature, but Binge is a full tracking platform underneath it. The app pulls aggregate scores from Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd, IMDb, and Metacritic into a single view, and builds parent guides from IMDb data covering violence, sexual content, frightening scenes, drug and alcohol use, and profanity. It also surfaces mid- and post-credits scene information, Academy Awards breakdowns, episode rating graphs, and where-to-watch data across streaming services. Users can import watch history from Letterboxd, IMDb, and Trakt, with ongoing Trakt sync supported. The app runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Binge competes in a crowded field. JustWatch has built a dominant position in streaming aggregation, Letterboxd functions as a social network for dedicated film watchers, and both TV Time and Trakt hold substantial user bases. The Live Activities jump scare system, the depth of the parent guide, and cross-platform availability represent Mehboob's bid for differentiation.

Binge is free to download. The jump scare warnings and other premium features require a subscription at $1.99 per month or $17.99 per year, or a one-time lifetime payment of $49.99.