Where Do You See Your Matches on Tinder?

Your matches are in the match list inside the Tinder app. Each match opens into a chat with her, and you can only send a message once you have matched. The heart icon at the bottom center is something else: Likes You, a separate page of people who already liked you, which comes with a paid subscription. A match exists only after both of you have Liked.

Men mix these up all the time, and it explains most "where did my matches go" questions.

A match is a woman who Liked you back. You reach your chat with each one from your match list. The list holds people you can message, and nobody else.

Likes You is the page behind the heart icon. It shows people who have Liked you but whom you have not answered yet. It is available to paid subscribers, so a free account will not show it. Someone on that page is not a match until you Like her too.

If you cannot find a woman you expected to see, the question to ask is which list she would be on. If she Liked you and you never answered, she is on Likes You or nowhere you can see. If you Liked each other, she is a match.

Open a match and you are in the chat. Tinder says you can only message someone once you have matched with them, so you cannot write to a woman who has not Liked you back.

That makes the list your working inbox. Check it at a regular time each day instead of whenever you remember, and write to new matches while the match is fresh. A woman who matched with you this morning is thinking about it this morning.

Tinder lists a short run of fixes for matches that load slowly or not at all. Go in this order:

1. Check your connection, and switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data to see which one is the problem.
2. Log out of the app and log back in.
3. Delete the app and reinstall it, which also puts you on the latest version.
4. Try Tinder.com in a browser if the phone app keeps failing.

If every match is gone at once, wait a while and try again before you do anything drastic. Tinder says that can be temporary, and logging out and back in is the first thing it suggests.

The list is only useful if you write to the people in it. Plenty of men collect matches and never turn them into anything.

a dating coach's approach to the first message is to make it about her. Use one specific thing from her page, keep it short, and give her something easy to answer. He also likes to thank a woman for a Like when she gave you one, which frames it as her choosing you.

Then keep it moving. coach moves a woman from the app to her number in four to seven messages, and every message has a purpose. Mention plans before you ask, so the invitation does not arrive out of nowhere.

A thin list is not a verdict on you. Tinder itself says that making a connection can take time and effort, that it is not always instant, and that it is not always about you. Its own suggestions are to refresh your bio or pictures and to turn on Smart Photos so the app leads with your most Liked picture.

My version is more direct. If few women Like you back, the cause is almost always upstream, in the first picture and the lines on your page. Lead with a clear, well-lit shot of your face, add pictures of you doing real things, and cut any group shot where she has to guess which man is you.

Then give it a couple of weeks and count. A short list that fills up after you fix the first picture tells you what the problem was.

A subscription can show you women who Liked you earlier, but it creates no interest that was not already there. It shows you the interest sooner. My view of paid features on any app is that they multiply what your page already earns. If the match list is thin, the Likes You page will be thin too.

So check the match list daily, answer fast, and fix the page if the list stays short.