Long distance relationships can be very rewarding and fulfilling, but sometimes you might need some help to keep things fresh and exciting. These apps will help you and your significant other stay intimate and in touch with each other.
To make sure you’re part of the nearly 60 percent of successful long distance relationships, learning about each other and understanding each other’s feelings with the help of these apps will be key.
Not all of these apps serve the same function. Some are designed specifically for secure and reliable communication, while others focus on having fun while you’re apart.
There are even gifting apps that make it easy to dote on your special person. Before all of that, we can look at apps that are designed to foster romantic relationships.
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The Best Apps for Long Distance Couples for Growth, Intimacy, and Learning
The apps we’ve listed here are by far the best choices for discovering new qualities about the person you love, and for them to learn about you. Many have built-in activities and questions to help guide conversations.
Long distance relationships have challenges that other relationships do not have, so these apps will help you and your partner navigate them together. They will help you feel closer and more connected to your special person.
Each app is unique in its own way, so finding the best app is more about finding the app that is best for your relationship, specifically.
Between
Between is an app that lets you have just one contact – your significant other. The app is designed for couples in love and offers a variety of features to complement your relationship.
In addition to having a chat and voice call option, Between offers some extra options that might interest you, like a shared calendar, anniversary tracking, and media sharing.
The pictures, videos, and notes you upload to Between are stored on the cloud, meaning that even if you lose your phone the media you’ve shared will be saved and recoverable once you log into the app again.
You can get reminders for not just anniversary dates, but any important dates you choose to track on the app. The shared calendar lets you sync your schedule up with your partner, to make sure you’re both always on the same page for dates and events.
THE COUPLE
Yep, we’re going big here – all caps in fact. THE COUPLE (Days in Love) is the full name of this app.
With over 25,000 reviews and a 4.5-star rating in the Google Play Store, it’s a fairly successful app that can help people with long distance relationships track important dates, trips, and pictures.
The app will remind you when events you’ve added to your schedule are coming up so that you can prepare for them. Whether it’s an anniversary or the day your partner is visiting, the app can count down the days until it happens.
You can get this app on Android or iOS.
Tuned
Tuned is a great app that you can use with your partner daily. It’s a lot like a digital scrapbook for your relationship.
You can easily share how you’re feeling, or post a quick message for your significant other to see. And it’s more than just leaving fun messages, the Tuned can help you form a deeper relationship.
You can both respond to questions that can range from funny to intimate, which will help you connect to your partner and give you both something to look forward to every day.
The app also lets you listen to music together and share playlists with your partner. You can get it for Android or iOS, it’s produced by Meta.
Paired: Couples and Relationships
Paired claims to be the number one app for couples looking to improve communication, stay connected, and build a happy relationship. The app is intended to be used daily and offers a variety of features for you to take advantage of.
One of the main appeals of the app is a new, research-driven question that is posed to you and your partner every day. You have to answer the question to see your significant other’s answer, so there’s no cheating!
There are also fun games for couples in general where you have to guess your partner’s answer to a variety of questions. Sometimes the questions are silly and there just to make you laugh, other times they’re meant to have thoughtful answers that might help you and your partner understand each other better.
You can get this app on Android or iOS.
Love Nudge
Have you heard of the five different types of love language? You and your partner might give and receive love in different ways, and it’s important to understand how each of you views love.
Love Nudge analyzes the way you and your partner feel affection and show love. When you have a better understanding of what your partner wants and vice versa, you’ll have a closer relationship.
Love Nudge also lets you set a love meter – a statistic showing how “full” of love your tank is. This way you can alert your partner when you feel a little neglected.
You can also set activity goals. Things like a surprise date night or simply a reminder to ask how your partner’s day went can be goals.
This is a great app to keep your relationship intimate regardless of the distance between you and your significant other.
You can get this app on Android or iOS.
Desire
As the name suggests, Desire is all about romance and intimacy between you and your lover. It’s designed to push you to be more adventurous and explore new grounds within your relationship.
It’s got hundreds of fun dares for you and your partner. Some are meant to be done in person, but many others can be done in long distance relationships, too.
They’re separated into different groups like mild and spicy, so you can easily tell what you’re getting yourself into. New dares are constantly released, and you can also come up with your own.
Desire lets you view your history of completed dares and also has a built-in chat if you want to keep everything together in the app.
WeFeel
WeFeel is designed to help you and your better half improve communication and trust. The app has a variety of minigames and questionnaires.
The app claims that all the activities within it are designed by psychologists with the goal of bringing couples closer together. The minigames require teamwork and give you insights into your partner.
WeFeel claims that you’ll have a renewed interest in your partner immediately after every activity. The activities bring you back to how it felt on the first date and connect you on the same level.
Gottman Card Decks
You may have heard of the Gottman Institute before. It’s an organization dedicated to helping people create and maintain healthy, loving relationships.
The Gottman Card Decks app combines a lot of the information they’ve published in books and research documents into a fun, easy-to-use, and free app.
There are 14 card decks to choose from, each covering a different aspect of relationships. Each deck has a large number of cards, and the cards themselves can vary widely.
Many of the cards ask personal questions, but there are also cards that can give you date night ideas, or other useful ideas. All of the information on the app is the result of scientific research into relationships, so you can be sure that it’s the real deal.
Couply: The App for Couples
The Couply app is great for long distance relationships. If you and your partner are searching for an app that can be tailored specifically to your situation, this is it.
To start, Couply has a long-distance mode. After you tell the app you are in a long-distance relationship it will change a lot of the information it shows you.
When in long distance mode, Couply will only show you date ideas for that. Additionally, Couply offers daily questions for you and your partner to answer together.
The questions can steer your thinking toward each other, the future, and your relationship in general. Couply can also show you articles that relate to long distance relationships and give you reminders for important dates.
The Best Communication Apps for Long Distance Relationships
There are some benefits to using apps for communication instead of your phone’s native texting and calling features. For one, it can be more private.
Anyone who picks up your phone can easily look through your text history and see the personal things you write and receive, but if it’s through an app you can sign out. Other people might not think to look in apps either.
Also, these apps store information on the cloud. That means even if your phone gets lost or damaged, you won’t lose the pictures or messages you have with your partner.
The following apps are the best when it comes to messaging and calls, and offer a variety of other features as well. They’re some of the most downloaded apps in the world.
WhatsApp is an all-around great messaging app for people in general, but also couples. The app lets you send and receive voice and video calls in addition to text messages.
You can even record voice messages to send to your partner, so it helps you feel more connected. WhatsApp prides itself on being a secure messaging platform, which means you can feel safe that no unwanted parties are listening in on your conversations.
You can also send documents like PDFs and spreadsheets, so if you’re budgeting trips with your significant other, this app can help share the files you both create to keep each other up to date.
WhatsApp is available or Android, iOS, Windows, and webview, and can be installed on up to four linked devices so you’re never out of touch.
Telegram
Telegram is another app similar to WhatsApp. It encrypts all the messages you send and receive, making for a private messaging experience.
You can send and receive text messages, voice calls, and video calls. Telegram also supports documents and other file types, so you can send your partner whatever you want.
It’s easy to save files, all it takes is a tap and you can download them to your device.
Discord
Discord is another messaging platform that supports voice and video calls as well. If you or your partner is a gamer, you might already be using it.
Even for non-gamers, it’s still a great platform for communication. You can send and receive pictures, videos, documents, and more.
You and your partner can create your own message room with different sections to keep things organized. You can also share your screen if you’re on your computer, allowing your partner to see and hear everything you do.
Discord can support massive chat rooms, so you don’t have to worry about a size limit if you’re hoping to invite a few friends along.
The Best Apps for a Fun Time in Long Distance Relationships
No, not that kind of “fun.” Stay focused. These apps are a great option if you two are bored and looking for a way to burn some time.
Depending on what you’re into, you’ll likely find many activities to do with your significant other over the web or through apps. These are just a few of the best apps that most people in long distance relationships can rely on for a fun time.
Rave
Rave makes watching movies or listening to music with your significant other much easier. If you frequently watch TV shows or movies together, this is a must-have app.
Instead of trying to press play on a video at the same exact time to get things synced with your partner, Rave will handle it for you.
In addition to syncing the stuff you two are watching, Rave lets you have video and voice messaging within the app as well. It’s easy to talk to each other about the show, and you can even invite more people to join in on the party if you want to involve each other’s friends.
Rave supports streaming platforms like YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and more. It’s available not only on Android and iOS but also on Windows and macOS.
Watching shows together is a great way to stay connected, and it’s something that you can make into a nightly routine.
Plato
Don’t worry, this app is not about philosophy. Plato lets you play a ton of different games with other people.
You can invite your partner to play with you. You can play games like mini-golf, chess, fishing, and much more.
Games aren’t just limited to two people, either. Depending on what you choose to play, you can have up to 250 people playing games at once.
The games on Plato are all simple to learn and get the hang of, so anyone can download the app and have fun. It’s a great go-to app for those days when you can’t decide what to do together.
Snapchat
Snapchat is a great app to stay connected to your person throughout the day. The app lets you quickly and easily send a picture or short video to your partner.
You can use a wide range of filters, some of which will definitely make you burst out laughing. Sending goofy pictures is a fun thing to do when you’re bored, and it’s a great way to let your significant other know that you’re thinking about them throughout the day.
Snapchat also allows you to choose to set a time limit on the pictures you send. If you set your picture to expire after 5 seconds, the person receiving it won’t easily be able to view it again.
Okay, it could make for some of those “fun” times we talked about earlier *wink*.
The Best Gifting Apps for Long Distance Relationships
One of the hardest parts for many people in long distance relationships is being able to afford the travel costs to see each other and do things together. Sure, save up your money for all that’s important, but that doesn’t mean you have to neglect your partner when it comes to gifts.
Sometimes all it takes is a small thing to make their day. These apps offer reasonably priced gifts for your partner.
Gopuff
This is mainly a snack delivery app that has expanded to also include a variety of household goods. You can input your significant other’s address to order snack deliveries for them.
Imagine how happy your partner would be to see their favorite snack sitting right outside their door for them. If food is the way to your partner’s heart, Gopuff is a must-have app.
You can also organize a movie night and buy each other snacks for a fun surprise.
The service is not available everywhere, so you’ll want to make sure you know the correct address for the delivery and check that it’s within the delivery range.
Lovebox
Lovebox is an app for long distance couples and families that offers physical and digital reminders in addition to the ability to send messages and set reminders to send love to others.
Lovebox is actually a company that offers physical love boxes that display pictures, gifts, and more, with a cute spinning red heart. There are different versions depending on whom you send them to, but they’re all high quality.
You can input special occasions to be reminded about, along with times you want to see reminders. You can even add your whole family and your significant other’s family, too!
This app will help you keep track of birthdays, holidays, and more so that you can always send messages out to those you care about.
TouchNote
Surprises are a great way to brighten up someone’s day, so why not surprise your loved one with a card in the mail?
TouchNote lets you design your own card and send it to whoever you want. You can customize cards to show pictures of you and your partner, along with whatever text you desire.
You could both send each other a bunch of cards and make a wall of them to relive all the fun memories. They’re reasonably priced and the app is very easy to use, so you’ll have no problem making the cards even if you’re not artistically gifted.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are these long distance apps better than just texting and calling each other?
The apps for long distance couples mentioned here will supplement your relationship by bringing more activities into your lives. Routines are vitally important to the health and dependability of a long distance relationship, but it’s inevitable that routine gets stale after a while.
Shaking things up with these apps will help you keep your relationship exciting and intimate. Many of the apps will challenge you and your partner to learn more about each other and connect on an even deeper level.
How do I pick a long distance relationship app to use?
Just talk with your partner and find one that sounds interesting! While some of the apps might have paid features, they’re free to download and tinker around in.
If there’s something you know you could use, like an app that allows you to input important dates and get reminders (that goes out to all the guys out there), maybe make that a top priority.
There’s no “best” app out there – it’s about what works for you and your significant other. So it’s best to experiment and try them all to find which apps best satisfy your relationship.
What about the pricing for these LDR apps?
Most of the apps listed here are totally free to use. They have ads to keep the app running and help the developers support themselves.
They might also have premium versions that require a one-time purchase or subscription. The pricing on those can vary, but it’s generally worth it for the apps you use all the time.
And of course, the gifting apps will cost money to actually send the gifts out. If you or your partner receive love through gifts, it’s well worth it as they’re some of the more reasonably priced options out there.
Are these long distance relationship apps safe?
Every one of these apps has a good reputation for safety and privacy. I have vetted and used all of them without any issues.
For the most sensitive communications, you and your partner can try secret chats with Telegram. They are about as secure as anything you can find, especially for free.
