How Does Incognito Mode Work on Plenty of Fish?

Incognito hides you from everyone on Plenty of Fish except the women you like or message, plus the matches you already have. You keep browsing, liking and chatting the same way as before. It comes with the paid tiers, POF Plus, Premium and Prestige, and you switch it on in your account settings. POF does not offer it in every location.

With Incognito on, POF shows you to three groups of people and hides you from everyone else.

The first group is any woman you like. Liking her makes you visible to her. The second is any woman you message. Writing to her does the same. The third is the matches you already had before you switched it on, so the conversations you have going carry on as normal. Turning it on does not cut off any woman you are already talking to.

Everyone else on the app stops seeing you. A woman scrolling through Meet Me or searching for men in your area will not come across you unless you have reached out to her first.

Incognito lives in your account settings. Tap your Profile icon, go to My account, then Manage account, and turn on Incognito.

If you cannot find it, check two things. First, it needs POF Plus, Premium or Prestige, so a free account will not have it. Second, POF has not made it available everywhere, so it may not appear in your area even on a paid tier.

Some men have a good reason not to be seen by everyone. A man who does not want his coworkers, his clients or his boss scrolling past him on a dating app has one. So does a man in a small town where half the people on the app know him, or a man who wants to look around quietly after a breakup before he is ready for anyone to notice he is back.

In those cases Incognito is worth having. You still get to use the app, and you decide who finds out you are on it.

Hiding has a real cost, and most men underestimate it.

On a normal account, a lot of your matches come to you without any effort. Women see you in Meet Me, like you, and a match appears. That passive side of the apps is one of the biggest reasons they work so well for the time they take. Once you are set up, the likes keep arriving whether you are on your phone or not.

Incognito switches that side off. No woman can come across you on her own anymore, so every new conversation has to start with you. If you like and message a handful of women a week, a handful of women a week is all the attention you will get. For a man who wants lots of dates, that is a lot to give up.

If you do go Incognito, your own outreach becomes the whole game, so each like and each message has to earn its place.

Be selective about who you like. Choose women whose pages give you something real to talk about and who clearly fit what you want, since a like from you is now the only way she will ever see you.

Search helps here, and it works on every membership. Set your filters for the distance, the age range and any other detail you care about, then work through the women who fit instead of liking whoever happens to appear in Meet Me. Each like you send is now doing the job the app used to do for you, so spend it on a woman you would genuinely be glad to hear from.

Write good first messages. Keep them short, mention one specific detail from her page, and end on a question she can answer in a line. A generic "hey" was already weak on a normal account. On Incognito it wastes one of the few chances you are giving yourself.

If you are on Prestige, Incognito pairs well with unlimited First Contacts. You can write to any woman you choose, and only the women you write to will see you.

Incognito alone is rarely a reason to upgrade. It is a privacy tool, and it makes most men's results smaller, not bigger.

Pay for a tier because of what it does for your dating, such as seeing who likes you or writing to women first. Treat Incognito as a useful extra you switch on when you have a real reason to stay hidden. If you have no such reason, leave it off and let the app show you to as many of the right women as possible.