Orthodate is on Google Play
Orthodate has been a website for its whole life, and websites are a strange place to keep something you check on the way home from liturgy. So here is the thing a lot of you have asked for: the Android app is on Google Play, in early access, right now. You tap once to become a tester, Google installs it like any other app, and it updates by itself from then on.
What changed
One tap, then it is yours
Open Google’s opt-in page, tap “Become a tester”, download. There is nothing to fill in and no list of ours to join.
The whole app, not a preview
Discover, verification, the parish map, chat, preferences. Everything the website does, in your pocket.
Notifications that mean something
Your phone buzzes when somebody actually writes to you. Nothing is invented to pull you back in.
How to get it
Early access on Google Play sounds technical and is not. Google runs an opt-in page for the app, you tap the button on it once, and from that moment Orthodate appears in Google Play for you like anything else you have ever installed. It is signed by us, delivered by Google and scanned by Play Protect. Nothing is sideloaded and nothing asks you to turn off a security setting.
It takes under a minute on the phone you are already holding. If the store takes a few minutes to catch up afterwards, that is normal: wait a little and open the link again from the same phone, signed in with the same Google account you tapped it with.
- Open the Google Play opt-in page for Orthodate.
- Tap “Become a tester”. There is nothing to type.
- Tap the download link, which the same page turns on for you.
- Sign in with the email you already use, and everything is where you left it.
Why it is in early access rather than just out
Because it is honest. A dating app touches photographs, location and private conversation, and the first weeks of any build are where the things nobody anticipated turn up. Early access is Google’s own way of saying so on the listing, and it means the people installing it know what they are getting and know we are listening.
The practical difference for you is small: the same store, the same automatic updates, the same account. The difference for us is that a report from a tester gets read the day it arrives, by the person who can fix it, rather than filed.
What is in the build
All of it. This is not a cut-down companion app that makes you open a browser for the real work. The selfie check that earns the verified mark is there, with the camera work still happening on your device. The daily batch is there, with the same ranking. The directory of more than 1,700 Orthodox parishes across the United States and Canada is there, on a map, which is considerably more useful on a phone than it ever was on a laptop.
Preferences carry over in full, including jurisdiction, fasting practice, church attendance and language. So does everything you have already written: your photos, your prompts, your matches and your conversations. Sign in with the same email and it is simply there.
The one genuinely new thing a native app can do is reach you. Push notifications arrive when somebody likes you, matches with you or writes to you, and nothing else. We are not going to invent a reason to buzz your pocket.
And the iPhone?
It is being built and it is next. We would rather ship one platform properly than two badly, and Android was ready first.
Until it lands, Orthodate runs properly in Safari. Open the share menu and add it to your home screen, and you get an icon that behaves very much like the real thing. We will put the iOS release here the moment it exists.
Try it