Hinge Users: Turn This Setting Off Now!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Hinge settings update

• The problem

• The solution

• How to boost your matches

London’s top Dating Photographer gives a hot take on the one Hinge setting that should never be used.

Hinge Settings Update

Setting up a strong dating profile is a total lego house. Confidence super high? check 👍 Removed all my outdated and awkward selfies? Check 👍 Used an awesome dating photographer to get great pics? Haha no doubt 🙂, but next comes the (yawn) options and preferences.

Getting your Hinge settings right

Your filters are your first line of defence, where you will sculpt your preferred landscape and hopefully filter out the bad dating stories you don't want to have in future.

Being way too persnickety means you’re left with fewer and fewer options but the bigger problem is when you are accidentally dismissing way too many of the good catches. 

Tweaking your Hinge

Part of this personal screening process involves telling Hinge about the people you want to come across and, more importantly, the people you don’t. 

Examples of what you’ll be asked are;

• Preferred ethnicity

• Preferred religion

• Preferred location

• Political leaning

• Preferred languages spoken

• Dating intentions

So for example, if you are looking for a non-smoker, you would select the non-smoker preference and the majority of the potentials shown in your card stack will now be non-smokers. 

The Problem

Supplementary to these prerequisites is the ability to tick a box called Dealbreaker on some of these choices. See example pic below;

Going the extra mile and ticking this Deal breaker box effectively eliminates any chances of coming across a smoker on the dating platform. Sweet! Done deal right?

Well it's not that simple, see you also just ruled out anybody that didn’t mention if they are a smoker or not, essentially wiping out both categories from your stack.

Now you will never see anyone who smokes and you will never see anyone who just couldn’t be bothered to fill that part in.

Also this bad boy algorithm doesn’t mess about, this action will substantially reduce your possible matches and suppress your reach.

The Solution

For some, there will be categories where this option will be absolutely vital, religious filtering or sexuality etc, things where there is no compromise and we should absolutely be able to filter this, so for some it's a good thing that this setting exists.

But we also need to make sure we are not needlessly closing the door on hundreds of potential good swipes. So what's the solution? I say, remove it completely.

How to boost your potential matches on Hinge

The safe way to do it is to go through your settings and just untick the deal breaker box for everything, then instead add your strictest preferences to your written text bio. 

This ensures that you still capture a glance at everyone who didn’t fill out certain sections of their profile but you’ll then be informing them directly of what you are not looking for.

If you’d like a complete breakdown of Hinge and its features check out our recent review where we delve into Hinge's best and worst bits and compare it to some of the other giants in the dating space.

We have many more of these urgent tips upcoming. Bumble, Tinder and many of the other big dating sites have settings that we’ve noticed could be having an adverse effect - stay tuned to this blog as we deliver more of our findings. 

In the meantime, happy dating!

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