How Does the Happn Algorithm Work?

Happn does not rank men by looks or activity. It works on crossings: every time you cross paths with someone, her profile shows up on your Main Page if your preferences match, whether or not you saw each other. Crossed profiles come first, and profiles around you appear gradually after you interact with them. Reciprocal preferences decide who can see whom, and Boost raises your profile for a limited time.

Happn's help center says profiles you have crossed paths with are shown first. It does not matter whether the two of you noticed each other. If your paths crossed and both sets of preferences fit, her profile appears.

After you interact with those profiles, profiles that are around you but further away appear gradually, within a radius of up to 120 km (75 miles).

The preferences in My Preferences are an age range and a gender. They work both ways: you will never be visible to a person who does not match your criteria.

That one rule explains a lot of silence. If you set a narrow age range, you are invisible to every woman outside it, and the same goes for her settings about you.

Premium members can narrow the home page further with More criteria, such as height, whether someone is a night owl, or what relationship they are looking for.

Boost makes your profile one of the top ones around you for a limited time. It is the first profile that active users who match your preferences see on their home page.

After you Like or SuperCrush a profile, it disappears from your Main Page, so the page shows only fresh people you have not interacted with yet. Hiding a profile with the X means you no longer cross paths with them.

So the page shrinks as you act on it. A man who Likes everyone fast finds the supply of fresh crossings thin.

Happn Spots lets members pick favorite places from several categories and find others who chose the same ones. It is available only in designated cities, so many men will not see it.

The app sorts by where you are, so your results depend on where you go. A man who works from home and walks the same block gets few crossings. A man who changes his routine meets more of the app's pool.

a dating coach describes online dating as a numbers game of ratios: matches per week, replies per match, numbers per reply, dates per number. Happn feeds the first ratio through your routes and the rest through what she sees on your page.

Keep location on, since crossings depend on it, and set an age range wide enough to include the women you would actually date. Narrowing it by a few years costs you more crossings than it saves in wasted Likes.

Do not Like every crossing. A selective man makes a clearer first impression with the women he picks, and the page keeps refreshing with people he has not met.

Think about how the two settings interact. Reciprocal filters mean that if you set a narrow age range, you are shown only to women inside it whose own range also includes you, which is a thin slice of any area. Widening your range widens who can see you, and the extra crossings are the cheapest reach the app offers.

Use Boost when you are going somewhere busy, since it works on the people around you. It will not fix a weak profile, so fix the first photo and the lines before you spend on it.

Happn decides who sees your page. It does not decide whether she Likes you or answers your message. A clear first photo, a few specific lines and an opener that mentions something she wrote decide that, and no setting reaches it.

The habit to avoid is treating happn like a stack you clear as fast as you can. It does not reward speed, so working through crossings carefully beats clearing them fast.

Treat the algorithm as a map of who can see you, and spend your effort on what they see when they do.