How to Change Your Location on OkCupid

On the OkCupid website, change your listed location on the settings page. In the app, open your own page, tap the edit pen under your name, and pick or type a location. Keep in mind that Discover in the app uses your phone's current location, so it shows you to people near wherever you are at the time.

On a computer, go to your settings page. Your listed location is there, and you can change it to where you live now.

This is the simplest route if you have just moved and want your account to say so. It takes a minute, and you can do it before you even unpack.

1. Go to your Profile.
2. Tap the edit pen under your name.
3. Pick a location from the options, or type one in.

That changes the location listed on your page.

This is the part most men miss. Your listed location and where Discover looks for women are not the same thing.

Discover in the app uses your phone's current location. So when you open the app, OkCupid shows you to people near where you actually are at that moment, and shows you the women nearby. If you are home, that is your neighborhood. If you are at your parents' place for the weekend, it is theirs.

In practice, that means the app keeps itself local. You do not need to change anything to be shown to women near you. What the listed location adds is honesty about where you live, which matters to a woman deciding whether a date with you is realistic.

Moving is one of the best times to be active on a dating app, and a dating coach uses it deliberately. Whenever he has moved cities, he gets online in the new place early. That way he arrives with women already interested and dates already lined up. It spares him the dead weeks of unpacking boxes and not knowing where to go out.

On OkCupid, the practical version is simple. Update your listed location as soon as the move is real. Once you are there, Discover will do the rest, because it follows your phone. Make your first few weeks count. Be active every evening, answer quickly, and suggest drinks early. A new city is a rare moment when you have no routine yet, and a few dates in the first month give you one. Mention the move in your written section too. "Just moved here from Chicago, looking for the best tacos in the city" is honest, specific and gives a woman an easy opening line.

If you are only in a city for a weekend or a work trip, Discover will still show you to women nearby, because that is where your phone is.

Be upfront about it. Say in your written section that you are visiting, and say it again early in any conversation. A woman who finds out on day three that you leave tomorrow will feel misled, and fairly so. A woman who knows from the start that you are only in town until Sunday can decide whether a drink this week appeals to her. Some women like the idea of an easy, low-stakes plan with a man who is passing through.

Do not set a location to make women think you live somewhere you do not. It is dishonest, it wastes her time, and it comes out the moment you try to set a date.

The goal of location settings is to be shown to women you can actually take out. Anything that works against that works against you.

The same goes for a location that has simply gone stale. If you moved across town, or out of the city, a year ago and never updated it, women are reading a place you no longer live. Check it now and then, the same way you would check that your photos are still recent.

Distance quietly kills a lot of good conversations. A woman who lives an hour away may like you and still never come out, because the trip is too much for a first date with a stranger.

So favor women who are genuinely near you. When a conversation is going well, suggest a place that is easy for both of you, for a short first date like a drink. My approach is to raise the idea of meeting early and get her number within a handful of messages. That works best when the plan is easy to say yes to, and nothing makes a plan easier than being ten minutes away.