Have you ever wanted to grab your friend's phone and seize control of their disastrous dating life? Now you can. 
 
 Enter Wingman, a new app launching today that lets you set up friends with only people you deem appropriate. Rubs hands together in devilish anticipation. It’s not a dating app, exactly. It's more of matchmaking app — a little bit like handing your friend your Tinder or Bumble account and saying, "Here, you deal with this." 
 
 Are you out of the dating game? Keep getting your kicks by swiping for your friends. Image: Christopher Mineses/Mashable 
 
 What sets it apart from the flood of other dating apps is that singles can’t create their own profiles or connect themselves with people. Your fate rests almost entirely in the the hands of your wingman or wingwoman. That's either terrifying or a total relief, depending on how you feel about your friends! 
 
 Wingman also stands out because it wasn’t created by the stereotypical figure behind many dating apps, the whiz kid who thinks the right algorithms can solve any problem. Instead it's the brainchild of Tina Wilson, a charismatic, fully grown woman with several decades of IRL dating under her belt. 
 
 Wilson, who's based in London, told Mashable that she found herself single after a breakup and had a squad of friends, most of whom were already paired off, who were eager to drag her into the world of online dating. She resisted, so they started searching sites for her. 
 
 Image: wingman 
 
 It was then that she realized there really was no easy way for friends to help each other out, especially if they lived in different places. And that’s how Wingman came to be. She's been beta testing it in the UK and Australia for several years, and now she's ready to make it official in the U.S. (It's available for iOS. Android version is coming soon.) 
 
 It’s now surprisingly easy to insert yourself into the romantic lives of your friends. 
 
 Clearly there are a lot of people who are too shy or nervous to do all the self-promotion required by dating apps, but this isn’t just for them. It's for anyone who wants a little help from a friend, including those who’ve dated online so much that they've grown weary from all the swiping and endless disappointment. 
 
 Now you can pass on this dreaded task to your trusted surrogate and let him or her do all the grunt work — and, even better, deal with all the rejection. When they try to match you with someone and that person says no, you remain blissfully unaware. 
 
 There’s an obvious appeal here for a lot of meddling friends too. There are those of us who are now in relationships and need to live vicariously through our single friends. And if you’re a graduate of the dating app scene yourself, this could be your chance to use all your hard-won knowledge to help others succeed. 
 
 The good news for all wingwomen and wingmen-in-waiting is that it’s now surprisingly easy to insert yourselves into the romantic lives of your friends. You simply login to the app with Facebook and create a profile for the single friend in question. You can do this for as many pals as you like, and each dater profile can also have multiple wingpeople. 
 
 Image: wingman 
 
 Your friend is then sent a link to review all the good things you’ve said about them. (Yes, they’d better be nice. This is not the time to revisit the awful thing your best pal said to you in middle school.) Once they’ve approved their profile, you can start swiping through potential matches for them. 
 
 If you swipe on a match for your single and that person is interested, your friend is automatically connected to them. They’re free to take it from there. Sorry, nosy nellies, you don’t get to be a part of their chats. 
 
 The gender and relationship preferences are all open. So basically you can help your friends find whatever they’re looking for. While in testing, women have tended to sign up more as wingpeople, there's been roughly an equal pool of male and female singles. 
 
 SEE ALSO: The best dating apps to get you laid 
 
 It's a lot of steps to go through to help your friends find casual sex. So chances are it will end up serving people who are looking to find more lasting connections. But Wilson told us it can be for casual dating as much as it is finding marriage material. 
 
 She designed the app to recreate the way these interactions would work IRL. You’re sitting at a bar, you see a cute guy or girl, point them out to your friend, make the introduction, and then duck out. 
 
 As in real life, you’re allowed to have more than one wingman, and there's even a leaderboard to see which wingman is doing the best for any given single. So if your sense of altruism isn't motivating enough, maybe your competitive side will jump in? 
 
 Image: wingman 
 
 While singles can’t go after matches directly, they can give their wingperson a “nudge” if they see someone in the app that they want you to connect them with. However, it’s up to you to decide if that person is, in fact, a good fit. 
 
 It's funny to think of your friends trying to save your from your own bad judgment — Wilson deemed it "a bit of a breathalyzer test." But you’re also opening a discussion about why your choices might have led your pals to screech, "No, no, no he’s not right for you." There’s probably something you can learn from that reaction. 
 
 This all raises an especially interesting facet of Wingman, which is that it's far more social than your typical swiping session. Testers reported to Wilson that they liked being able to see all the nice things their friends said about them in their profiles, and also that it was much more collaborative. 
 
 So if you’re the kind of person who’s willing to open up your romantic life to friends, this seems like a smart way to do it. 
 
 One user who’d just moved to a new city told Wilson that it made navigating an otherwise lonely experience more fun, saying, "My sister and my mom are still helping me out, introducing me to people." For their part, wingpeople liked to be involved and were invested in finding good matches. 
 
 So if you’re the kind of person who’s willing to open up your romantic life to friends, this seems like a smart way to do it. Of course not everyone wants to have their mom or sister involved in their dating decisions... and that’s fine too. You obviously need to be selective about your squad. 
 
 And if you’re just really not into group dating, there are literally hundreds of other apps where you can fly free without a wingman to help — or hinder — you. ||||| Wingman is a new dating app that gives friends control of your love life. Where most apps start by asking users to set up a profile and swipe their way to romance, Wingman lets friends weigh in on your best qualities. Think of it as a digital matchmaker where other people get to talk you up, then send you potential mates they approve. 
 
 The app’s creator is a London-based woman who wanted to create an easy way for friends to recommend dates. Wingman (not to be confused with the airport-hookup app of the same name), requires at least two people to play: a person trolling for dates, and a trusted, willing friend. If you try to scroll alone, it’ll instruct you to find a friend to do the hunting. If you want to select dates for a friend, they need to accept your invite to the app first. 
 
 The app pulls basic, editable info from your Facebook, but incorporates your friends’ feedback (with your approval) on what makes you so darn special. It also asks for info on how you know your wingman. Are you just a friend, or is it complicated? Maybe you shouldn’t be on this app if you choose the latter. 
 
 In theory, Wingman isn’t so different from handing your dating profile off to a friend in a bar. I view dating like a wrestling match, where everyone is screaming about their personalities and throwing chairs. Occasionally, it’s nice to take a break and tag someone else into the ring. Wingman has potential as a confidence-booster, too. Your pals see beyond the personal flaws you obsess over. They absorb rejections. Their selection is a show of affection, the kind of care you’d get from a middle-school friend marching over to your crush to tell them you think they’re cute. 
 
 And then there’s the scary part. Do your friends think you have terrible taste in partners? Are all the matches they pick for you suspiciously different from your usual type? Let this app be the Rorschach test for how they view your love life. 
 
 If this still sounds strange, consider that professional matchmakers charge hundreds of dollars to clients looking for a little romantic help. You could probably con your friends into participating by buying them some pizza.
– Tired of the online dating world? Let your friends do the searching and swiping. So says Tina Wilson, a Londoner who found after a breakup that her friends were trying to play matchmaker, but that they didn't have any good tools to find someone for her online, reports Mashable. So she started her own, an app called Wingman, which works much like many dating apps but requires the participation of both the person who will be doing the dating and the friend who will be doing the deciding. The dater can't write his or her own profile or make his or her own connections with other potential daters—only the "wingman" can. The app has been up and running in the UK for a few years now, but is just being released in the US. In practice, at least so far, mostly women are doing the matchmaking, but there is a pretty even number of men and women daters. And having a friend involved serves as a confidence-booster, too, reports the Verge. Friends tend to write lovely, flattering profiles, and they are the ones to "absorb" the rejections that the person doing the dating will never have to see. One woman describes it being a real help when her mother and sister took the reigns after she moved to a new city and didn't know anyone. (Most of the 4,500 online dating sites and apps are tiny.)