Today · anniversary
Three years. The balcony, the burnt pasta, all of it.
For two · Early access
Dear Us is a private vault for couples: photos, little notes and anniversaries, stored on your own devices, synced end-to-end encrypted, and exportable in full whenever you want. One purchase — no subscription, no ads, no hostage-taking.
Founding couples get every future update, free.
Real reviews and posts about today’s couples apps.
“Do not trust the Between app. They just accidentally deleted years’ worth of precious user photos and videos.”— r/LongDistance, Sept 2025
“Best actually free app for couples?”— a question that keeps resurfacing on Reddit
“Want your photos back after breaking up? Pay for membership.”— one-star review of a leading couples app (translated)
When an app holds your memories hostage — with price hikes, paywalled “regret medicine”, or by simply shutting down — those memories were never really yours.
Photos, notes, anniversaries — a shared timeline only the two of you can see. No feed, no games, no ads in sight.
Local-first: everything lives on your phones first. Optional sync is end-to-end encrypted — the relay only ever sees ciphertext.
One tap exports every photo and note in open formats (ZIP + JSON). Free forever — not a paywalled “undo”.
| Typical couples app | Dear Us | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ~$15–25/month subscription, plus in-app maze | One purchase. That’s it. |
| Your memories | On their servers — hostage risk | On your devices, E2E encrypted sync |
| Breaking up | Pay “regret medicine” to recover your photos | A parting ritual: each keeps a complete copy |
| Away from the app | Ads, feeds, virtual pets, pressure to log in | None of it. A vault, quietly yours. |
| If it shuts down | Memories lost or locked | Local data stays yours; export is free forever |
No. One-time purchase, and founding couples from this list get every future update free. No trials that quietly convert, no in-app currency, no “regret medicine”.
A parting ritual: both of you confirm, each device keeps a complete copy of the timeline, and the link dissolves. Nobody gets locked out of their own memories.
On your own devices, first and always. If you turn on sync, data is end-to-end encrypted before it leaves your phone — the relay server only ever sees ciphertext, and can’t read it.
Everything keeps working offline — that’s what local-first means. Export in open formats stays free forever, and a sunset plan gets published before anything changes.
A phone-first web app that installs like a native app (PWA) on any phone. Native versions only if the data earns them.