What Does the Dealbreaker Toggle Do on Coffee Meets Bagel?

It turns one of your Preferences into a hard rule. Coffee Meets Bagel normally treats Preferences as preferences, so it may still suggest someone slightly outside them. Its own example is a woman 7 miles away when you asked for 5. Turn on This is a dealbreaker at the bottom of a Preference page, and you will never be shown anyone outside that setting.

Without a dealbreaker, your Preferences are guidance. The app uses them to decide who to suggest, but it gives itself a little room. Ask for 5 miles and someone at 7 can still turn up.

A dealbreaker takes that room away. Once it is on for a setting, the app keeps everyone outside that setting out of your suggestions entirely.

Open the Preference you care about and scroll to the bottom of its page. The toggle there reads This is a dealbreaker. Switch it on, and that setting stops bending. Switch it off, and it goes back to being a preference.

Each Preference page has its own toggle. So you can be strict about one thing and relaxed about everything else.

Coffee Meets Bagel is open about the trade. Every dealbreaker shrinks the pool of people you can be shown. Stack several of them and you can expect fewer matches over time.

a dating coach makes the same point from the other side. He describes losing women on the apps to their age settings. A woman's filter screened him out before either of them looked, even though they would have liked each other in person. Your dealbreakers do the same thing to women who might have liked you. The setting feels like a standard. In practice it hides people you never get to judge.

A dealbreaker earns its place when you genuinely would not go out with someone outside it.

Distance is the most common case. A woman an hour away is hard to see often, and My first rule for dates from the apps is to meet somewhere close to where you live. If you do not drive, or your weeks are long, a strict distance can spare you conversations that were never going to become dates.

The same goes for anything that is a true yes or no for you. Only you know what those are. There should be very few of them.

Most men set their Preferences once, on a rough idea of their type. Then they make them strict without ever testing them.

The edges of an age range are a good example. The woman one year past your limit is not a different kind of person from the woman just inside it. Leave that setting as a preference and the app can show her to you now and then, and you can still pass. A preference costs you a second of looking. A dealbreaker costs you the woman.

Every other Preference follows the same logic. Ask yourself whether someone just outside the line would really be a no on a date. If the honest answer is "probably not," leave it flexible.

Open each Preference in turn and ask one question: would I actually turn down a date over this?

If the answer is a firm yes, the dealbreaker can stay. If the answer is "I would rather not, but I would go," switch the toggle off and let it be a preference again. The app will still lean toward what you asked for. It just will not hide everyone else.

Then look at how many you kept. A man with one or two firm lines has a clear idea of what he wants. A man with a dealbreaker on nearly every setting has usually built a wall around a very small pool, and then wonders why the suggestions feel thin.

If your suggestions feel thin, loosen something before you add anything. Turn off one dealbreaker, use the app for a week, and count how many of your likes turn into conversations. Then decide whether to keep the change.

My advice on the apps is to test and adjust one thing at a time, the way a marketer tests a page. Change your distance, your age range and three other settings in one evening, and you will never know which one helped. Change one, give it time, then move to the next.

Keep the dealbreakers you still believe in after that test. Those are the rules that are actually protecting your time.