Can You Hide Your Bumble BFF Profile?

Yes. In the standalone BFF app, you can show or pause your profile in People Discovery. Go to Account settings, select Privacy and toggle the switch. While it is off, no one else sees your profile in People Discovery, and you cannot browse other people either. You can also hide your online status and your age from the same Privacy settings.

Open the BFF app and go to Account settings. Select Privacy, and you will find the People Discovery toggle there. Switching it off hides your profile, and switching it back on shows it again.

The fact that this is a toggle matters. Hiding is not deleting. You decide when to switch it back on, and nothing about your account has to be rebuilt when you do.

Bumble describes this as pausing your profile. It is then not shown to anyone else, including people you have already waved at. A wave you sent yesterday does not keep you visible to that person.

There is a trade-off that catches men out. While your profile is paused, you cannot browse other profiles in People Discovery either. You are out of the pool in both directions, and you stay that way until you show yourself again.

So hiding is a full stop on meeting people through that screen, not a quiet way to look without being looked at. If you were hoping to scroll in private, BFF does not offer that.

You do not have to hide the whole profile to protect some of it. BFF's Privacy settings also let you show or hide your online status, and show or hide your age on your profile.

Those two are for the man who wants to stay on the app without telling everyone when he is around, or how old he is. Hiding your online status stops people seeing that you are using the app right now, which removes the pressure to reply the moment a message arrives.

Think about what you gain before you hide your age. People deciding whether to wave at you are trying to picture who turns up, and a missing age leaves a gap in that picture. Leave it visible unless you have a real reason.

Most of the time the reason is ordinary. You have enough people to talk to and want to stop collecting more. You are busy for a few weeks. You are traveling. Or you tried it, it did not suit you, and you want to stop without deleting anything.

Those are all fine reasons. A hidden profile costs you nothing, and it can come back whenever you like.

What you should not do is hide yourself because a single conversation went badly. One flat chat tells you about that chat, not about the app.

A hidden profile cannot make you a single friend. That is the one risk of the toggle: you switch it off for a busy fortnight, forget it, and three months later wonder why nobody has waved at you.

When you hide, pick the day you will check again and put it in your calendar. If the busy stretch is over by then, switch it back on and spend ten minutes in People Discovery. If it is not, move the date. A short, written deadline keeps a pause from turning into quietly giving up.

Bumble has said that BFF Mode inside the Bumble app is closing for members in the US, Canada and Mexico, and that those members move to the separate BFF app. The steps above are for that standalone app.

If you cannot find the Privacy setting where this page says it is, check which app you are in. A man who looks inside the main Bumble app will not see the same screen.

If you are showing your profile, make it easy to say yes to. Friendship apps work like any other: a stranger decides in a few seconds whether you look like someone who would turn up.

Use a clear photo of your face, and give a person a reason to wave. Say what you do on a weekend in specific terms. "Climbing on Saturdays and bad at it" beats "love adventures". It tells a stranger what you would do together.

The deeper point is repetition. Friendships come from seeing the same people over and over, whether online or off. An app can open the door, but you still need a plan to meet: a coffee, a walk, a game night. Pick one activity you would do anyway and turn up every week. A profile you can switch off is useful, but it is the standing weekly plan that builds a social circle.