Arcov Blog
Writing on couples, privacy, and small daily rituals, from the team building Arcov.
Latest
Home-screen widgets for couples: a tiny window into each other's day
The best couple features aren't in the app — they're on your home screen, where you'll actually see them. A look at what a good couple widget should show.
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What to do when you miss your partner
The ache of missing someone doesn't need fixing — but the evenings are long. A few small things that help, and a couple that quietly make it worse.
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Staying close during a deployment
Deployment strips a relationship down to the few minutes of contact you can get. Here's how military couples keep something alive in the gaps — without a reliable connection.
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How to make a relationship work across time zones
When your partner is waking up as you're going to sleep, the hard part isn't distance — it's that you never share a present moment. Here's how couples build one anyway.
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Mood tracking for couples — does it actually help?
Before we put a mood feature in our app, we tested whether it actually changes anything. Here's the honest answer, including the cases where it makes things worse.
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30 prompts for couples who've run out of things to say
After enough years, 'how was your day?' stops generating new information. A list of 30 prompts that do — sorted by how much energy they take.
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A privacy threat model for couples
When you think about 'privacy,' you're probably thinking about the wrong threat. A simple framework for figuring out what your couples-app data actually needs to be protected from.
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How to share your day with your partner when you're tired
Most relationship advice assumes you have energy. Most evenings, you don't. Here's how to keep sharing — without it becoming another thing on the list.
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Long-distance couples: 4 small habits that actually keep you close
We surveyed long-distance couples in our beta. The advice that came up over and over wasn't what we expected — and it wasn't 'have more video calls.'
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Daily check-ins for couples — a 5-minute habit, 3 months in
We asked beta couples what changed after three months of daily mood check-ins. Some of it was predictable. The most useful parts weren't.
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The case for a paid app for two
Most apps for couples are free. We made Arcov a small subscription on purpose. Here's the math, and the values, behind that decision.
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Where does your relationship data live?
When you write a love note inside a couples app, where does it actually go? A look at how the popular ones store the most intimate things you say.
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What end-to-end encryption actually means for couples
A plain-English explainer on end-to-end encryption — exactly what's encrypted in Arcov, what stays server-readable on purpose, and why we built it where the keys live on your two devices, not our servers.
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Hello
A first note on what this blog is for — privacy, couples, and small daily rituals.