How to See Who Liked You on Hily

Tap Activity, the heart icon, and open the Likes tab. Everyone who has liked you is listed there, but some of the people are blurred. A subscription gives you Unblurs every day to reveal them, and you can buy more if you run out. Once someone is revealed, tap the heart to like her back.

Everything sits in one place: Activity, marked with the heart icon, then the Likes tab.

The list shows every person who has liked you. You do not have to hope you come across them in Finder, and you do not have to guess. If a woman has liked you, she is on it.

Check it at a set time each day. A like from yesterday is warm. A like from last week has cooled, because she has kept using the app and talking to other men since.

The catch is that not everyone on the list is visible. Some profiles are blurred, so you can see that someone liked you without seeing who.

That is how Hily turns the list into something you pay for. The women are there. Seeing them takes an Unblur, and there are two ways to get one.

• A Hily subscription gives you Unblurs every day.
• You can buy extra Unblurs in the Profile section of the app.

Spend them the way you would spend anything you pay for: on the people you are most curious about, not on the whole list at once.

Once a profile is revealed, tap the heart on it to like her back. Because she has already liked you, that makes a match, and the chat opens.

This is the easiest match you will get on Hily. She has already said yes to your card. The only decision left is yours.

What you are buying is time and certainty. Instead of scrolling Finder and hoping to reach the women who liked you, you see them straight away and can answer the ones you want first.

a dating coach is firmly against the habit of never paying for anything on a dating app. He calls that bias a hindrance. The apps are businesses, he argues, and they look after the people who pay them. He is just as firm that you should not pay blindly. His rule is to test a feature that is fairly cheap, see whether it makes a real difference to your dates, and drop it if it does not.

For this list, the test is simple. Over a couple of weeks, count how many women you matched with through it, and how many of those turned into a conversation or a date. If the list is producing plans, it is paying for itself.

A list of women who already like you is tempting to clear in one go. Resist that.

coach believes many apps notice a man who likes almost everyone and read him as less selective, which can mean better women stop being shown to him. There is a plainer cost too. Every match with a woman you are not keen on becomes a chat you either drag out or abandon.

So look properly before you tap. Read what she wrote and look at all of her photos. Like her back only if you would genuinely want to take her out.

A woman who liked you first has handed you a head start. Do not waste it by matching and saying nothing, or by sending a bare "hey".

Write soon. My warning is that a woman you are chatting with online is also chatting with other men, and the longer you take, the more likely one of them takes her out first. Pick one real thing from her page, react to it lightly, and give her something easy to answer.

Then keep the chat heading toward a plan. coach gets from a first message to a woman's number within four to seven messages. He says she needs some attraction, enough comfort to know you are a real and normal person, and plans already mentioned by both of you before you ask. Her like tells you some attraction is there. Your messages have to supply the rest.

If the Likes tab is short or empty, paying to unblur it will not change much.

My point about paid features is that they multiply what you already have. If you get nothing, multiplying it by a million is still nothing. More likes come from a stronger first photo and a few lines that give a stranger a reason to reply. Fix those first, and the list will start to fill on its own.