How Do You Restore a Hinge Subscription?

If you subscribed through the Apple App Store or Google Play, open Hinge, tap your Photo Icon, tap the Gear Icon, scroll to Subscription and tap Restore Subscription. If that does not bring it back, log out, log back in and try again. A plan bought with Hinge payment, which runs through Stripe, cannot be restored to a new account.

Men usually hit this after a change of phone, a fresh install of the app, or signing back in after a while away. The plan is still paid for, but Hinge shows you as a free member.

Restoring asks your app store for the purchase it already has on record, so nothing is bought a second time. That makes it the first thing to try whenever Hinge shows you as a free member and you know you paid. Try the restore before you ever tap to buy again.

The steps are the same on both:

1. Open Hinge and tap your Photo Icon.
2. Tap the Gear Icon.
3. Scroll to Subscription.
4. Tap Restore Subscription.

Do it while signed in to the same Apple ID or Google account you paid with. The store can only hand over a purchase it knows about.

Hinge's first fix is simple: log out of Hinge, log back in and tap Restore Subscription again.

It sounds too basic to matter, but it clears up a lot. Signing in fresh makes the app check your account again rather than leaning on whatever it had stored.

If restoring gives you a payment error, Hinge says the cause can be another Hinge account on a different phone number. Deleting one of the two accounts should fix it.

This happens more than men expect. A new number, an old account never closed, and suddenly there are two of you. Hinge says each Apple ID can have only one Hinge account and one subscription at a time, so the second account gets in the way.

Before you delete either one, open both if you can. Keep the one with the conversations you care about and the likes you have been getting. Then delete the other and restore on the account you kept.

A plan bought through Hinge payment is not held by Apple or Google, so the Restore button has nothing to fetch from a store. Hinge says this kind of subscription cannot be restored to a new account.

That makes one rule important. Hinge says deleting your account cancels a Hinge payment plan immediately. Whatever time was left is gone for good, and opening a fresh account later will not bring it back. So if you paid this way, do not delete the account you paid on to start fresh. The paid time goes with it.

If something looks wrong with a Hinge payment plan, contact Hinge's Support Team instead of deleting and starting over.

Once you have restored, confirm it. Tap your Photo Icon and look at the subscription status in the top left of the screen. For the renewal date, tap the Gear Icon and scroll to Subscription.

If you pay through Apple or Google, the plan also shows in your phone's own subscription list. It takes a few seconds to look, and it confirms that the store and Hinge agree about what you paid for.

Note the renewal date while you are there. Hinge charges for renewal within the 24 hours before your current period ends, so if you ever want to stop, turn off auto-renew at least a day before that date.

A restored plan does nothing on its own. The paid features only help if you are using the app well while they run.

a dating coach's argument for paying rests on the apps being businesses that look after their paying customers. In his telling, a paid plan widens your audience. What that wider audience finds is still up to you, and a weak set of photos just gets passed over by more women.

A restore often comes after time away from the app, which is a useful moment. You are looking at your own page almost the way a stranger would.

So while you are back in the app, look at your first photo with fresh eyes. Your face should fill a good part of the frame, lit by daylight, with your eyes visible and no friends crowding the picture. Then answer the likes waiting for you, keep your first lines short and specific to her, and suggest a drink while the conversation is still going well.