The average romance gets facilitated by a panoply of different apps. Tinder to meet for the first time. iMessage to say "I love you." Spotify to send that special love song. Foursquare to show where you should meet for dinner. Instagram to send each other pictures. And so on.
You&Me wants to take the place of all of them. Its creators are the ones behind HowAboutWe, the online dating site that specializes in offline dating. But You&Me is strictly digital, an all-purpose Swiss Army Knife of love that's designed to let couples express their affection without the burden of opening other apps.
Naturally, the app lets you send messages to your partner, and slather him or her with text, filters, and stickers as you see fit. Here's where it gets fun: A secret messaging feature lets you send flirty (possibly pornographic?) images to one another with some degree of privacy. When a secret "message" arrives, it's steamed up like a mirror in a bathroom during a shower. (Like any, um, naked pics you text or email, these also live forever on servers across the world.) You have to wipe away the steam before you can see the image. Should we put on some music? The designers added Spotify and Rdio integration, so you can share Tupac or Sinatra with your beloved.
One especially clever photography feature includes a re-creation of the classic Photo Booth experience, in which the camera takes a strip of four images within seconds of one another--just long enough for you to form kooky new expressions. It also offers a new take on the selfie, called the "Halfsie," with both you and your partner taking up one half each of the image. (Now that's love.)
According to HowAboutWe co-founder Aaron Schildkrout, the You&Me app was born out of the digital needs of his own romance: "I met this woman about a year ago. I guess we're still--hopefully endlessly--falling in love," he explains. "We were designing and building You&Me right at this time. Many of the features in the app (and a ridiculous number of bug reports) came from just using it. At first, it sucked, and we oscillated back to iMessage and texting again and again, despite our good intentions to be 'super-users' of the thing we were building. But over time, as the app got refined, it became our sole messaging app."
Download You&Me for free from the iTunes App Store. An Android version is coming soon.