How Do You Pause Your Hinge Account?

Tap your photo icon, tap the gear icon and switch Pause on. From then on, Hinge stops showing you to new people, but your existing matches stay open and you can keep talking to them. To come back, switch Pause off in the same place, or tap the unpause button on your Discover screen.

Pausing takes about ten seconds.

1. Tap your photo icon.
2. Tap the gear icon, which opens your settings.
3. Switch the Pause toggle on.

To come back, open the same settings and switch the toggle off. Or skip the settings entirely: while you are paused, your Discover screen shows an Unpause Profile button, and one tap brings you back.

The pause does one thing. Hinge stops showing you to new people.

Everything you already have stays where it is. Nothing goes anywhere: the account, the photos and the matches all stay, and you can keep chatting with any of them. So the pause is not a way to go silent. It is a way to stop new women arriving while you deal with the ones in front of you.

One thing it does not stop is billing. Hinge says pausing your account does not pause your subscription, so a plan keeps running and renewing while you are away. If you are stepping back for more than a few weeks, decide what to do about it before you pause.

This catches men out. A like you sent before you paused is still delivered, and the woman who receives it can still match with you.

So if you sent a batch of likes on Sunday and paused on Monday, some of those women may like you back during the week. You can end up with new matches while you are paused. Treat them like any other match. A woman who says yes to your like and then waits a week for a reply has usually moved on.

If you would rather not have that happen, pause before you send likes, not straight after.

The pause fits a few situations well.

You have met someone worth seeing again. You are not ready to delete anything, but you do not want new women arriving while you find out where it goes. Pause, keep your existing chats polite, and give the new thing your attention.

You have more conversations than you can handle. a dating coach's approach is to deal with the women already in his chats before he goes looking for more, starting with the ones closest to a date. Pausing enforces that. No new arrivals until the backlog is handled.

You are away or swamped for a while. A heavy stretch at work or a trip where you will not be answering is a fair reason. Better a pause than a week of matches who get no reply.

If you are pausing because you will be slow to reply for a while, say so in your chats rather than letting the replies stop without a word.

One line does it. You are away for a couple of weeks, and you would still like to get that drink when you are back. A woman who knows why you went quiet can wait. A woman left guessing usually moves on. And if a conversation was already close to a date, set the date before you go.

A pause is rest, and rest has value. You come back less irritated, you read women's pages properly again, and your messages lose the flat edge they pick up when you are fed up.

But the pause does nothing to what women see when you come back. The photos you return with are the photos you left with. If results were the reason you paused, spend some of the time fixing the one thing that decides most of it. a dating coach's view is that your photos carry most of the weight on any dating app. Get one clear, well lit photo of your face for the first slot, cut the weakest two, and come back with a set that is actually different.

When you are ready, switch Pause off or tap the button on your Discover screen.

Then come back steadily rather than in a burst. a dating coach's read is that the apps favor men who use them regularly, a few short sessions a week, over men who vanish and reappear. So do not send forty likes on your first night. Send a handful with a real comment on each, answer anyone who has written to you, and settle into a rhythm you can keep.