Three deliberate rules, in order. Everything else in the app follows from them.
Kindred runs three separate sides: a couple looking for other couples, on your own looking for friends, or on your own for dating. They are not filters on one pool. People in friends mode are never shown to people looking to date, and the friends side contains nothing romantic anywhere in it.
This matters because every app that has tried to run friendship and dating out of one pool has watched dating win. Separation has to be structural rather than a setting somebody can quietly ignore.
Your profile is a set of interests, a few lines in your own words, and roughly how far away you are. No photograph, on either side.
Distance is always approximate. Your exact location is never shown to anyone, ever, and it is not stored in a way that would let somebody work out where you live from your profile.
Three days of talking, then names and photos appear for both of you at the same moment. Nobody sees the other first. Nobody gets to look and quietly withdraw before being seen themselves.
Three days is short enough that nobody builds a fantasy and long enough to know whether you enjoy each other.
What you are doing, where, and when. This is the part almost no other app does, and it is the reason conversations here end in a coffee rather than a slow fade. Suggesting a meeting is normally the only risky move in the whole process, and Kindred takes that risk on itself so neither of you has to be the brave one.
When you meet, you scan each other's code. That is what turns a conversation into something the app treats as real, and it is the same mechanism that makes couple accounts trustworthy.
For couples specifically. Both partners register separately, each with their own email address and date of birth, then confirm each other by scanning a code in person. Until that happens the couple profile is not shown to anybody. One person cannot run a couple account alone. Not discouraged from. Cannot.
That is why it costs a small amount rather than being free: the money has to come from somewhere, and the alternatives all involve selling your attention or your data.
Kindred does not run background checks and does not verify that anyone is who they say they are. No consumer app does, whatever the marketing implies. There is a report button with real consequences, and there is honest advice about meeting strangers, and neither of those is the same as a guarantee.
You choose one of three separate modes: couples meeting other couples, friends, or dating. You are matched on interests, a short written profile and an approximate distance, with no photos on either side. On day 3 photos and names unlock for both people at the same moment, and by day 7 the app prompts you to agree a plan with a date, place and time. When you meet, you scan each other's code to confirm it happened.
Only an approximate distance. Your exact location is never shown to anyone and cannot be worked out from your profile.
No. Both partners register separately with their own email address and date of birth, then confirm each other by scanning a code in person on two phones. Until that scan happens the couple profile is not visible to anybody at all.
No, and neither does any comparable app. Kindred does not run background checks and does not confirm that anyone is who they say they are. It has a report button with real consequences behind it, and it says plainly that meeting strangers carries risk no app can remove.
Kindred is in testing and opens in Toronto first. Join the launch list and you get Kindred free for good, plus three months of Kindred+.
Kindred does not run background checks and does not verify that anyone is who they say they are. No app does, whatever it implies. Meet somewhere public the first few times, tell someone where you are going, sort out your own way home, and never send anyone money. The safety section is honest about exactly what we do and what we cannot do.