How to Hide Your Badoo Profile Without Deleting It

In the Badoo app, go to your Profile, tap the Settings gear, tap Account and switch on Hide account. On the web, the same toggle is called Hide profile. Nothing gets deleted, and when you want to be visible again, you tap the toggle once more.

1. Go to your Profile.
2. Tap the Settings gear.
3. Tap Account.
4. Switch on Hide account.

To come back, follow the same path and switch it off. That is the whole thing.

If you use Badoo in a browser, the setting does the same job under a slightly different name, Hide profile. Look for that label rather than Hide account. If you cannot see the words you expected, the setting is almost certainly still there under its other name.

The difference matters more than it looks.

Hiding is a switch. Your account, your photos and your settings stay where they were, and one tap puts you back. Deleting ends the account, and anything in it goes with it.

If there is any chance you will want Badoo again, hide. You can always delete later, and going the other way is much harder.

One practical point before you flip the switch. If there is a woman you have been talking to and you do not want to lose touch, get her number first. Then the break costs you nothing, whatever the toggle does to your chats in the meantime.

A break is the right tool more often than men think.

• You have started seeing someone and you want to give it a fair go without a phone full of other chats.
• Work or a move is eating every evening for a few weeks.
• You want to rebuild your photos without anyone seeing the half-finished version.
• A run of slow weeks has you opening the app in a bad mood.

That last one deserves a word. When things are going badly, a dating coach's advice is to take a break and reset your frame of mind rather than grind on in a downward spiral. A man who keeps using an app while he is annoyed at it writes flat openers and makes careless choices. A week off does more good than another week of that.

The risk with a break is that it never ends. coach is blunt about the plan to start again later: in his experience, later usually means never.

So pick a day. Put it in your calendar when you switch the toggle on. A break with an end date is a reset. A break without one is quietly giving up.

A hidden account is a good moment to fix whatever was not working, because nobody is watching while you do it.

Start with the photos. In My experience, one poor photo can sink a set of good ones, because she reads the poor one as the honest version of you. If three of your photos are strong and one is only all right, the weak one goes. Take a few new ones in daylight, in clothes you actually wear, in places you actually spend time. Put the clearest shot of your face first.

Then read what you have written about yourself. Does it sound like a person talking, or like a form? Cut anything you would not say out loud on a date. coach found early on that the version of him that blended in got very little attention, and a more distinctive version got a great deal more.

When your date comes round, switch the toggle off and treat it as a fresh start rather than a return to old habits.

Before you do, look through your photos once more with fresh eyes. After a few weeks away, it is much easier to spot the one that does not belong, the one you kept because you had nothing better at the time. If it still looks weak to you now, it looks weak to her too.

My point about any first attempt is that it is rarely your best work. Change one thing at a time, give it a week or two, and see whether more women answer and more conversations turn into plans. Keep what helps and drop what does not.

Come back with better photos and a plan to suggest a date within a handful of messages, and the time away will have paid for itself.