My Boo
A private space for couples — pair through Boo IDs, share milestones, chat, and stay close even at a distance. Under development.
Why we built this
Because the best conversations shouldn't be buried in a social network.
Most couples apps default to one of two failure modes — they replicate a chore tracker (shared to-dos, calendar reminders), or they bury intimacy under a feed of features nobody asked for. There was no app that felt warm and personal, designed around the actual rhythm of a relationship — especially for long-distance couples sharing time zones, languages, and lives.
So I built one. Solo. Designed and developed end-to-end.
The three principles.
End-to-end privacy isn't a selling point — it's the baseline. The PIN is hashed and stored in Keychain/Keystore via expo-secure-store. The plain PIN never persists. The couple ID is XOR-encrypted with a SHA-256 PIN hash. Nobody, including me, can read your messages.
Every screen is designed to feel calm and considered. No dark patterns. No dopamine loops. No infinite scroll. Cormorant Garamond for warmth. DM Sans for clarity. Plum and rose so it feels like a place, not an app.
My Boo is built for exactly two people. That constraint is the whole idea — it keeps everything intimate. There are no group chats. No friend lists. No discoverability. Just you and your partner.
Built for connection.
A conversation only you two can read
Full-screen chat with swipe gestures, haptic feedback, and floating heart animations. No read receipts unless you both want them. No typing indicators that turn into anxiety. Just messages — and they stay between you.
Every anniversary, remembered
Set milestones once. The home screen surfaces upcoming anniversaries automatically — first date, first kiss, the day you said yes. No manual reminders. No notification spam. Just the dates that matter.
Your memories, not the algorithm's
A shared gallery for the photos you actually want to keep together. No public posts. No engagement metrics. Memories live where you can find them — between the two of you, and nowhere else.
Your space stays yours
Set a shared PIN with your partner during pairing. The PIN is required to unlock the app. Both partners must agree to changes. There's no "forgot password" flow that exposes your data — privacy by design, not by policy.
LDR-aware, by default
Long-distance is a first-class case. Time zone awareness is built into every chat timestamp, milestone reminder, and presence indicator. Day-counters between visits. Countdowns to the next time you see each other.
From research to ship.
Talked to real couples first
Before writing a single line of code, I interviewed couples — both long-distance and local — to understand what they actually wanted from a shared app. The recurring pain points: existing apps felt like homework, defaulted to social platforms (Instagram DMs), and ignored LDR realities.
Designed in Figma, prototyped fast
Mobile-first wireframes, then high-fidelity screens. Built a tight component library — colour tokens, typography scale, spacing rules — so every new screen could ship in hours, not days. Every interaction was prototyped before it was coded.
Built the entire app, solo
React Native (Expo 52), Firebase (Auth + Firestore + Storage), React Navigation 6, gesture-handler + reanimated for swipe interactions. Custom tab bar with FAB radial menu. Cache-first auth boot strategy so the app loads instantly from previous session.
Shipped to TestFlight, then production
Soft-launched with a small group of couples. Iterated on pairing friction (the original Boo ID exchange had too many steps). Tightened the onboarding to under 2 minutes. Then launched publicly at myboo.fun.
The stack.
Every line of code, every Firestore rule, every design token — solo.
Under construction.
My Boo is actively being built. The architecture is designed, the design system is done, and development is underway — chat, milestones, pairing, and the LDR-aware layer are all in progress. When it's ready, it'll ship at myboo.fun.
get notified when it launches ↗