What Are Convo Starters on Hinge?

Convo Starters are short, personalized ideas for a first message that Hinge shows you, built from the photos and prompts on someone's page. They suggest a direction, like asking about her favorite restaurant, and they never draft or send a message for you. You decide what to write, which means a tip is only as good as what you do with it.

Hinge puts them in two places.

The first is Discover. After you tap the heart on some photos or prompts, a few Convo Starters may appear underneath to help you write a comment. It works the other way too: women who like one of your photos or prompts can see tips drawn from it.

The second is a fresh chat. Once you have matched, but before either of you has sent anything, a handful of Convo Starters may appear near the message bar. Hinge says this happens when you both have the feature switched on. As soon as someone sends the first message, they disappear.

Hinge also only offers the feature in some regions. Its announcement names the U.S. and the UK.

Hinge says it sends the prompt responses, photos and pronouns from a dater's public page to OpenAI, which generates the tips. OpenAI acts as Hinge's data processor. Hinge says OpenAI cannot use the data to train its models and deletes it after a short period. It also says the feature does not analyze facial geometry, biometric data or private messages.

The tips are generated automatically. Hinge says nobody at Hinge writes or reviews them before you see them. If one feels off or irrelevant, you can tap Give Feedback and say which tip was the problem.

Hinge leaves some content out on purpose. Its help page says you may not see tips on selfies or group photos, on voice, video or poll prompts, or on anything related to sensitive topics.

So if you tap the heart on her mirror selfie and nothing appears, the feature is not broken. That kind of photo is one Hinge may skip.

A tip is a topic, not a message. Hinge's own example is a photo at a pasta restaurant, which might bring up tips like asking about her favorite restaurant or swapping recipes. Send "What's your favorite restaurant?" as written and you have asked her a survey question.

Use the tip to find the subject, then add something of your own. A guess works: "You look like someone who judges a place by its bread before the main course arrives." A tease works: "I'm going to need proof this was not a tourist trap." An opinion works: "Controversial, but the best pasta in this city comes from a place with plastic chairs."

All three are about the same pasta photo. Each one gives her something to push back on, and each one sounds like a person rather than a form. Good flirting in text has always worked this way: be fun, tease a little, and let her see what it is like to talk to you.

The tips come from her photos and prompts, so other men who like the same photo are probably looking at similar ideas. If several of them send the tip as written, she gets the same question more than once in a day.

Hinge says the tips are there to inspire you, not to write the message for you. Take that literally. Your comment is the first thing she learns about how you talk, and a borrowed sentence tells her nothing about you.

The same goes for the chat tips after you match. A suggestion near the message bar can remind you what she wrote about, which is useful. The words you send still have to be yours.

If you already write good comments, the tips add little and you can ignore them. If you tend to stare at a page and send nothing, they are a decent way to find a first angle. Hinge said that in early testing, people sent more comments with their likes overall.

You can also switch them off in the app's settings. If you do, Hinge stops making tips from your own photos and prompts, and you stop seeing them on other daters' pages too.

On or off, the comment that reaches her is the one you typed. Make it specific, keep it to a sentence or two, and once the chat is going well, ask her out.