A dating app made for Cedarville students

A Cedarville University dating app should offer something specific: a place where everyone is a student you could actually run into, with none of the noise of a general app. The sections below cover what that means and how Cedar Mingle approaches each part.

Cedar Mingle is independent. It is built by a Cedarville alum and run by HydrOxygen Labs, LLC, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cedarville University.

Why a Cedarville dating app is a different thing

Cedarville is a small campus. You share classes, friends and a dining hall with the people you would be matched with. A general app treats that as a problem to work around. A campus app can treat it as the point.

When everyone on the app is a fellow student, a match is someone you might sit near in class next week. That makes a message feel more like a hello and less like a gamble.

Only Cedarville students get in

Sign-up needs a @cedarville.edu email, and members must be 18 or older. That one rule does a lot of work. It keeps the app to your own campus community instead of a pool of strangers. Alumni can join a waitlist.

Real people, checked

A profile with fake photos is a fast way to lose trust, so Cedar Mingle checks before anyone goes live. New members take a selfie copying a randomly chosen pose, and it is compared with their profile photos. Every photo is also screened. A checkmark on a profile means that person passed.

It is not a promise that every date will go well. It does mean the face in the photos belongs to the person you are talking to.

A short list instead of a feed

An endless feed of faces makes people treat each other like options. Cedar Mingle gives you a short list of picks each morning. You look at them, like the ones you like, and move on with your day.

When two people like each other, the chat opens. Nobody has to open with a line to a stranger who has not shown interest.

Control when you need it

A good campus app should be easy to step away from, and easy to protect yourself on.

• Report or block from any profile or chat. A person on the team reviews every report.
• Snooze your profile any time, for finals, a busy semester, or because you met someone.
• You can read more about how this works on our safety page.

It works on your phone

Cedar Mingle runs in your phone's browser and can be added to your home screen, so there is nothing to hunt for in an app store. It is free to use, and Cedar+ is an optional paid upgrade.

Some background

Cedar Mingle first launched in 2020, and about one in eight Cedarville students made an account. It then went quiet, and it has since been rebuilt. If you want to know who is behind it, the about page has the story.

What a dating app cannot do

An app can only introduce you. The rest happens the old way: a coffee in the village, a walk, a few conversations. If you want ideas for that first meeting, we put together a list of date ideas near Cedarville.