For immediate release · September 2026
beau. 2.0 arrives with a feed built for community and opens across the United States
The update adds a chronological feed with no likes or follower counts, richer profiles, and a new way to show where you’re out.
PORTLAND, Maine (September 2026) beau., the privacy-first social app for gay men, has released beau. 2.0, built around the people, places, and weird little things that make gay life feel like gay life. The update is available now on iOS, with Android to follow, and beau. is now open to members across the United States.
A feed without the scoreboard. At the center of 2.0 is a chronological feed of photos, songs, thoughts, and prompt answers from the people around you. There are no like counts and no follower counts. When a post lands, members can heart it, and only its author sees who. Replies go directly to a private message instead of a public comment section.
Every profile has more to say. Everything a member posts now lives on their profile alongside photos, prompts, tags, and music. Profiles still show no ages and no body stats.
Out Now, tagged. Members can tag a Space when they post and show that they’re out for the next few hours. Spaces, beau.’s pages for queer bars, cafés, bookstores, community centers, and other gathering places, show who’s out now, what’s coming up, and photos shared by people who’ve been there.
“beau. has always been about community,” said founder Travis Heynen. “The people, the places, the little things you want to tell someone about. 2.0 is built around all of it.”
Three headspaces, still. beau. continues to organize connection around Friends, Play, and Dating. Members can switch with a tap, and what they see, and who sees them, follows the headspace they’re in.
Privacy hasn’t moved. Messages are end-to-end encrypted in DMs and group chats, screenshots are blocked app-wide, and beau. has no ads, sells no user data, and uses no third-party ad tracking. Messaging is free.
The release also adds light mode, follows without public counts, and a logo that gets a new outfit every time the app opens.
beau. is free on iOS and Android. beau. 2.0 is available now on iOS, with the Android update coming next. beau.plus, an optional subscription, adds read receipts, unsending, profile-view history, and a weekly profile boost.
###
About beau. beau. is a home base for gay life: a feed from your people, the people around you, and the spaces where we gather. Built around three headspaces, Friends, Play, and Dating, beau. combines social sharing, local discovery, friends of friends, queer Spaces and events, and end-to-end encrypted messaging, with no ads, no data sales, and no race or age filters. beau. is a product of Beau Period LLC in Portland, Maine, and is available on iOS and Android.
Earlier releases
For immediate release · August 2026
beau. expands across the country and puts local queer spaces on the map
Two months after launching in New England, the app is live across most of the United States, including New York, Florida, and Texas, and now maps the bars, cafes, and community spots where local queer life happens.
PORTLAND, Maine (August 2026) beau., the privacy-first queer social and dating app, has expanded from its New England launch footprint to most of the United States, including all of New York, Florida, and Texas. Remaining cities continue to open from the in-app waitlist.
The expansion follows the way queer life actually clusters: city by city and neighborhood by neighborhood, so new members arrive to a community rather than an empty screen. Recent openings include New York City, Houston, Miami, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and Wilton Manors.
The app now maps queer spaces. Spaces gives the real places where queer life happens, the bars, clubs, cafes, bookstores, and community centers that anchor a neighborhood, their own pages inside the app, on a map of the area. Paired with “Out Now,” which shows who is around and what they are up to, Spaces is built to answer the question every app before it ignored: not just who is nearby, but where everyone actually is.
A public version of the directory lives at beauperiod.com/spaces, with city guides for Boston, Providence, Portland, Provincetown, Ogunquit, Orlando, and Wilton Manors, and more cities on the way.
“Every gay man keeps a map in his head. The bar you start at, the cafe where you can actually talk, the place everyone ends up anyway,” said Heynen. “beau. finally writes that map down.”
beau. is free on iOS and Android. Cities not yet open can join the waitlist in the app.
###
For immediate release · June 25, 2026
beau. launches across New England as a privacy-first queer dating app built beyond the grid
The new app offers Friends, Play, and Dating headspaces, end-to-end encrypted chats, encrypted private photos, no ads, no data selling, and no race or age filters.
PORTLAND, Maine (June 25, 2026) beau., a new queer social and dating app, has launched across Maine, New Hampshire, and the Greater Boston area.
Founded by Portland-based Travis Heynen, beau. is a deliberate answer to a decade of apps that optimized for attention, proximity, and transaction over actual connection. The app is built for queer people who want better ways to meet men, whether for friendship, dating, play, events, or simply knowing who is nearby and what is happening tonight.
“The apps made connection easier, but they also made a lot of people feel more disposable,” said Heynen. “I wanted to build something that still understands attraction and immediacy, without treating people like inventory.”
Unlike traditional grid-based apps, beau. organizes connection around three headspaces: Friends, Play, and Dating. Members can shift between modes depending on what they are looking for, and the app adjusts the experience around that context. A person can be looking for friends in one moment, something romantic another day, or something more immediate on a Friday night. beau. is designed around that reality.
The app also includes features meant to make local queer life feel more connected. “Friends of Friends” helps members discover people through shared social context. “Out Now” shows who is around and what they are up to in the moment. Events give members a way to find gatherings, pre-parties, meetups, and community activity without leaving the app.
Privacy is central to the product. beau. has no ads, does not sell user data, and does not use tracking pixels. Messages are end-to-end encrypted, which means even the company cannot read them. Private photos are encrypted and shared only when both people choose to unlock for each other.
“We cannot sell what we cannot see,” said Heynen. “That was one of the first principles of the app. Queer people deserve spaces where privacy is not a premium feature or a marketing slogan.”
beau. also rejects some of the sorting tools that have defined older dating apps. The app does not offer race filters or age filters. Age is used only for required 18+ verification and safety purposes, not as a public sorting mechanism. The goal is not to remove preference or attraction, but to avoid building discrimination into the product itself.
The app takes a different approach to rejection and blocking as well. Members can use a “Not for me” option when there is no safety issue, creating a clearer and more humane way to decline. Safety blocks remain available for harassment, threats, or abuse.
Heynen built beau. independently, without venture capital backing.
“This is not a company trying to extract more from queer people,” he said. “It is one gay guy in Portland building the app I kept wishing existed.”
beau. is available now in Maine, New Hampshire, and the Greater Boston area.
###
