Me Then YouMe then You

Everything they
actually told you.

The things you are supposed to know about your partner and never quite do. Their sizes when you are stood in a shop. Their mum's birthday, before it has gone. What they cannot eat, before you book.

You each fill in a page about yourself. Then you swap. From that moment you are holding a straight answer instead of a guess, and every line of it is in their own words. Nothing is guessed and nothing is invented.

An example, not real answers


Shoe size

UK 6

Cannot eat

Shellfish, and olives on principle

Their mum's birthday

25 September, in three weeks

Been hinting at

That pottery class

Ring size

Not answered yet

Blanks are shown, not hidden. A page half filled in is the normal state of one, and a blank you can see is more use than a gap you cannot.

Try it before you get it

A round of the guessing game runs in this page, with no app and nothing to sign up to. One of you answers, you hand the phone over, the other guesses. It is the part of the app people actually play.

Play a round

What it is for

Standing in a shop


Their sizes, and what they would actually wear

Asked once, kept for good

What they have been hinting at

In their words, not your memory of them

What nobody should buy them again

Which is just as useful

Before you book


What they cannot eat

Allergies and hard nos, written down

A cuisine they quietly cannot stand

Nobody has to know but you

Who they would want at the table

And who they would rather not see

Before it has gone


Their mum's birthday, and their dad's

You get the reminder, three weeks out

Their friends' partners

So nobody gets a name wrong

What helps on a day that has gone wrong

Written down on a day that has not

Where it all sits

The whole of it

On your phone. Nowhere else.

There is no account, no sign-in, and no server of ours. Nothing you write is sent anywhere, which is why the app works in aeroplane mode and why the privacy page is short.

The one thing that does travel is the swap itself. It works the way AirDrop does: your phone finds theirs in the same room, you tap their name, and they are asked by name and nothing moves until they say yes. It goes straight from one phone to the other over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, encrypted, without touching the internet.

Your answers cross. Your journal, your private notes about them, your gift log and which questions you skipped do not. A copy of everything is for you; a swap is for them, and they are not the same thing.

If you stop being a couple, unpairing stops any further updates reaching them. It does not reach back into their phone and delete what they already have, and we would rather say so than promise something we cannot do.

The whole privacy policy, which is the same words the app itself shows you.

What it costs

Two of the eight packs are free and stay free. Everything else opens with one payment, once, for the pair of you. There is no subscription and nothing renews. The app never asks either of you whether the other one has paid.

Both of you need an iPhone. There is no Android version and no website version, and that is worth knowing before you spend anything.

Not out yet

Me Then You is finished and in testing, and it is not on the App Store today. There is nothing here to buy or download yet. If you want to know when it lands, say so in an email and you will be told once, when it does.