A Dating App for People Who Read

If one of your dating requirements is that your potential partner actually reads, there’s a new dating app you may want to know about.

It’s called Readme, and its premise is refreshingly specific: bring together people who love books—or simply want to date someone who does.

In a crowded dating-app market, where new platforms seem to appear almost daily, Readme is arriving with some serious pedigree. The app was created by the team behind Co–Star, the astrology app that has built a devoted following among people fascinated by birth charts and compatibility.

Banu Guler, Co–Star’s founder, announced Readme on X this week, introducing it as a new approach to dating built around reading and language.

The idea is straightforward. Rather than relying primarily on photos, prompts and conventional compatibility questions, Readme asks users to reveal something about their literary tastes. The app then uses those preferences to connect people with potentially compatible matches—and gives them an immediate subject to talk about.

“We say Readme is for people whose love language is language,” Emily Segal, the app’s head of brand, said. When creating a profile, users answer questions about the books and writing they like. Those answers create a portrait of their taste in language, which the company believes can reveal something about how they approach intimacy and relationships. When two people match, Readme also shows how their taste profiles overlap.

The idea, Segal says, is to offer something that traditional dating apps often lack: a sense of personality and curiosity beyond the swipe.

“Existing dating app culture flattens people and misses the human and erotic dimensions that really make people click,” she said. Readme, she added, aims to create a more authentic and charming experience—one where users can meet, fall in love and discover books, as well as something about themselves, along the way.

The app also makes sense as an extension of Co–Star’s philosophy. For years, users have turned to the astrology platform to understand their compatibility with other people, and many have asked the company to create a dating app of its own.

According to Segal, however, it took time to determine how to translate that interest into a dating experience that felt genuine. Astrology, after all, is only one way of thinking about compatibility.

Whether astrology will eventually play a role in Readme remains unclear. For now, the app is betting on a different kind of compatibility: the books you love, the words you respond to and the possibility that someone else might love them, too.

In a dating world increasingly shaped by algorithms, Readme is making a decidedly old-fashioned proposition: Maybe the fastest way to connect with someone is to start with a book.

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