How Do You Change the Distance Setting on Hinge?

Tap the Dating Preferences icon, tap Maximum Distance, drag the slider to the radius you want, and tap Save. From then on Hinge only shows you people inside that distance by default. If you also want to see people beyond it, tick the box on that screen that lets Hinge show you people outside your limit too.

1. Tap your Photo Icon, then tap the Dating Preferences icon.
2. Tap Maximum Distance.
3. Drag the slider to set your radius.
4. Tap Save.

The box sits on the same screen as the slider. It reads "Show profiles outside this preference." Leave it empty and your radius is a hard line. Tick it and your radius becomes a starting point rather than a wall.

Distance is one of the preferences every member can set, so you do not need a subscription to change it. It is also private. Hinge says your Dating Preferences only act as filters and nobody else can see them, so a woman will never know you chose five miles or fifty.

Men mix these two up all the time. Your location is where Hinge thinks you are, and it shows on your page as a neighborhood or an area. Your distance setting is how far from that point you are willing to look.

So if your feed suddenly fills with women from a city you left weeks ago, the slider is not the problem. Hinge does not move your location for you when you travel or move. Tap your Photo Icon, the Pencil Icon, then Location under My Vitals, and fix the pin first. Then decide on the radius.

The right number is the distance you would actually travel for a first drink on a weeknight. Not the distance you would travel for a woman you already liked. The distance you would travel for a stranger.

That sounds obvious, but most men set it by feel on the first day and never look at it again. The result is one of two problems. Set it too tight and you see the same few faces every time you open the app. Set it too wide and you end up talking to women who live an hour away, and those conversations tend to die the moment someone suggests an actual evening.

A useful test is to picture your ideal first date spot. A bar near your place, a coffee shop near your office, whatever you would actually suggest. Now ask how far a woman could live from that spot and still say yes without thinking twice. That is roughly your radius.

Where you live changes the answer a lot.

In a dense city, a small radius still holds more women than you will ever get through. Going wider mostly adds commutes. Many men in big cities do better with a tighter circle, because every woman in it is someone you can see on a Wednesday without planning around the train.

In a smaller town, the math flips. A tight radius can leave you with a feed you have finished by Thursday. Widening it, or ticking the box so Hinge can reach past your limit, keeps new faces coming. You just have to be honest with yourself that you will make the drive when it counts.

Distance shows up in the conversation long before the date.

When you are both close, suggesting a drink is easy. "There is a good wine bar five minutes from you" is a real plan, and real plans get yeses. When she is far away, every invitation comes with a quiet question about who travels, and that question slows everything down.

If you do widen the radius, deal with the gap early and lightly. Offer to come to her side of town for the first drink. It costs you half an hour and removes the one thing that could stop her saying yes.

A wider circle is the most common answer men reach for when the apps feel slow. Sometimes it is the right one. Often it just spreads the same result over more miles.

Look at where things stall. If plenty of women appear but few like you back, your radius is not the issue, because a bigger pool only means more women passing on the same page. If likes come in but the chats end before anyone picks a night, the gap is in the conversation. Say something about her in your first line, keep the next few exchanges light, and ask her out while she is still enjoying it. Moving a slider takes seconds. Getting that last part right takes practice, and it moves fastest with a coach reading your real chats alongside you.