The Readme dating app for book lovers has launched, built by the team behind Co-Star and pitched squarely at people who want their next match to have strong opinions about what they’re reading. If your non-negotiable in a partner is a proper bookshelf, this one’s for you.
What Readme actually does
The concept is direct. Readme connects people who read, or who want to date someone who reads, by building profiles around literary taste rather than the usual swipe-fodder of gym selfies and vague holiday snaps. When you sign up, you answer questions about the books and writing you like. The app then builds what it calls a portrait of your taste in language, and uses that to generate matches.
Emily Segal, head of brand, explained the logic in a statement shared by Co-Star founder Banu Guler. ‘We say Readme is for people whose love language is language,’ Segal said. ‘When you match with someone, it also shows you how your taste profiles interact.’ The aim, she added, is something more layered than the current crop of dating apps offer. ‘Existing dating app culture flattens people and misses the human and erotic dimensions that really make people click,’ she said. ‘With Readme, we hope people will have a more authentic and charming dating app experience, meet cute people, fall in love, and learn about books, and about themselves, along the way.’
Segal is not just a brand voice on this project. According to Dazed Digital, she is the author of the 2020 novel Mercury Retrograde, which examined culture and technology through the lens of astrology. That background sits naturally alongside what Readme is trying to build: a dating product where your reading habits say something real about how you connect with people.
From Co-Star to the Readme dating app for book lovers
The move into dating has been on the cards for a while. Co-Star built its reputation helping people analyse compatibility through astrology, and according to the statement Guler shared, users had been asking the team to build a dating app for years. ‘It took a while to figure out how to do it in a way that felt truly authentic,’ the statement read, ‘since astrology is only one piece of the puzzle.’
Whether astrology will feature in Readme is still to be determined. For now the app leads entirely with literary taste, though the Co-Star DNA around compatibility and self-knowledge is clearly embedded in the approach.
Readme was first reported on 4 September in journalist Emily Sundberg’s newsletter, Feed Me, according to Mashable. The timing is worth noting. Weeks before Readme’s launch, Co-Star had announced its sale to AI image-generator Midjourney, per Mashable. The two announcements together sketch out a team in transition: one chapter closing on the original astrology product, another opening with a new app aimed at a different kind of compatibility.
Is it worth downloading?
The Readme dating app for book lovers is available to download now. It is free to get started, and the profile-building process centres on answering questions about your reading tastes rather than anything as blunt as a personality quiz. The promise is matches with genuine common ground, people whose relationship with language, fiction, ideas and writing overlaps with yours in ways a shared gym membership simply cannot.
For anyone who has sat through yet another first date where the other person’s last book was a school set text, that pitch is going to land. Co-Star built a loyal following by making compatibility feel like something you could actually interrogate rather than just hope for. Readme is attempting the same trick, with your reading list doing the work your birth chart used to do.
Download Readme now and find out whether your taste in books is doing you any favours on the dating front.