Best Apps For Designing Polyamory Groups

An anonymous developer has released an iPhone app aimed at making life easier for people in polyamorous relationships. The Poly Life includes a scheduling program and social network. "Many poly families use great tools like Google Calendar to keep track of their busy schedules, but there was nothing out there that was made specifically for their community," the developer said in an interview with Heavy. "They needed a tool that was customized for their lifestyle."

Users can create a separate calendar for each of their partners, much like the color-coded calendar option in Google Calendar. A "relationship manager" allows people to categorize their partners in a variety of ways, including relationships that are purely sexual, purely emotional, and everything in between. How refreshingly transparent!

The Poly Life also includes a feature which users can employ to set ground rules for their relationships, such as "whether you're allowed to text your other partners when [a partner is] around, or if you can have sex in their partners' bed," Daily Dot writes.

The social networking aspect of the app is intended to allow members of the poly community to meet each other and share experiences, as most people do on Facebook or Instagram, shielded from potentially judgmental outsiders.

Early reviews of the app haven't been terribly positive. On a Reddit thread in r/Polyamory, posters mostly agreed they have enough software to manage their schedules already. "We use Google Calendar. The rest that the app does seem pretty useless to us," one wrote. "A simple document holds our rules." In a previous thread, Redditors expressed disappointment that the app was for iPhone only: apparently Android is the OS of choice for the poly community (or as they call their family units, "polycules").

It's true that as far as scheduling and sharing goes, the app doesn't seem to improve much on Google Calendar, especially after Google's recent update. And Google Calendar is better-looking, which isn't exactly shocking–The Poly Life was made by an anonymous developer for a very niche community. Maybe a new version of the app could tap into the sensors planned for the Apple Watch and help reveal what your partners are feeling. Now that would be helpful, for any kind of relationship.