Glass Colony
iPhone · iOS 26+

A living ant colony,
behind the glass.

Glass Colony — "Formicarium" on your Home Screen — is a pixel-art formicarium where a colony digs its own tunnels, raises its brood and stores food. It isn't a game: no points, no coins. You feed it, follow one ant with the magnifier and learn what it's doing.

Coming soon to theApp Store See features
  • Keeps living with the app closed
  • More than 40 sourced facts
  • No account, no ads
Glass Colony on iPhone: the Amber Colony on day 13 with 160 ants, tunnels dug under the mound, and the Feed, Magnifier, Red light, Share and Settings controls

Watch a nest build itself

A simulated colony that digs, forages and grows on its own, and the tools to understand what every ant is doing.

🐜A colony that builds itselfThe queen lays eggs that become larvae, pupae and workers. Workers dig tunnels and chambers on their own, every grain ends up on the mound, and no two colonies dig the same nest.
🍯Feed it, watch them recruitLeave honey, seeds, a cricket or water in the foraging area. Scouts find it and lay scent trails that grow stronger as more ants follow them.
🔍Look closer with the magnifierDrag the magnifier across the glass: it follows one ant and tells you its role, what it's doing and how old it is. Tap the frame and nearby ants raise the alarm.
📖Did you know?More than 40 cards of real ant biology, each with its source, appear when the magnifier sees the behavior they explain.
🌙Red light at nightFrom 10 PM to 7 AM by default, or whenever you want, the glass shifts to dim red light. The screen stays on while the app is open, and the controls hide on their own.
⏳Alive while you're awayClose the app and the colony keeps going. When you come back, a card tells you what happened — up to 7 colony days — and the journal keeps every milestone.

The story behind Glass Colony

A real formicarium is fascinating, and most of the time you can't tell what any single ant is doing.

Glass Colony puts a simulated colony behind glass, on your iPhone. Each ant follows simple rules — dig, carry, forage, tend the brood, follow the scent — and the nest emerges from all of them together, the way it does in real colonies. The magnifier and the "Did you know?" cards turn watching into learning: what you see is explained by real ant biology, with a source for every fact.

It is made to stay on — on a desk, a nightstand or a shelf — and to keep living when you close it. No account, no ads, and your colony stays on your iPhone. In English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Made in Mexico by Christian Irack at Ingeniería.dev.

Free to download — one optional purchase, no subscriptions

Glass Colony downloads at no cost with the black garden ant on garden soil or colored sand, and every way to watch it: feeding, the magnifier, the facts, red light and the journal. Complete Collection — $3.99 USD, one-time (a non-consumable In-App Purchase) adds three species — the harvester ant, the leafcutter ant and the honeypot ant — two substrates — edible blue gel and a plaster nest — and every species added in future updates. Pay once, keep forever. No subscriptions, no ads.

The purchase is handled by Apple through your Apple ID, can be restored at any time with Restore purchase (on the Complete Collection screen and in Settings), and supports Family Sharing. Full details in the Terms and Support pages.

Legal & support

Your colony is waiting

Open Glass Colony, leave a drop of honey and watch the first scout find it.

Coming soon to theApp Store

Ingeniería.dev — Christian Irack · [email protected]