Why Am I Running Out of Profiles on Hinge?

Because Hinge only shows you people when the interest could run both ways. Your Discover feed is built from women who fit your preferences and whose preferences you fit, so tight settings on either side leave a small pool. The fix Hinge offers is a checkbox under a preference, labeled "Show profiles outside of this preference." Tick it, and Hinge will occasionally show you people outside that preference. It also shows you to more women.

Hinge's Discover feed is not a list of every woman near you. It only shows recommendations based on mutual interest. That means women who fit your preferences, and whose preferences you fit in return.

That second half is what empties feeds. You can keep your own settings wide and still see very few people, because each woman's settings decide whether you qualify for her. If her age range stops a year below yours, the two of you never appear to each other.

So a feed that runs dry is not always a sign that nobody is out there. Often it is two sets of settings overlapping in a small space.

You control half of that overlap directly. Every preference you set trims the group of women who fit you. Age, distance and the rest each take a slice, and a few tight ones together can describe a very small group, even in a decent-sized city.

The other half you control indirectly. Whether you fit her preferences depends on the details on your page, and on the settings she chose before she ever saw you.

Hinge gives you a direct fix. Under a preference, check the box that reads "Show profiles outside of this preference." With it on, Hinge will occasionally show you people outside that preference.

Hinge says this does two things. It shows you more people, and it shows you to more people too. Both matter. More women in your feed is only half the gain. The other half is more women seeing you.

Use it on preferences you would genuinely bend on. If a preference is a real line for you, leave the box unchecked. Widening it would only fill your feed with women you are going to pass on.

Go through your preferences and sort them honestly. Some are rules you would walk away over. Most are guesses about what you like, set on your first day on the app.

Start with the guesses. A couple of years either side of your age range, or a little more distance, can bring back women you would have been glad to take out. Change one thing at a time and give it a few days, so you can tell which change actually helped.

a dating coach's standing advice for the apps applies here: test, keep what works, and cut what does not.

Here is the part most men skip. Widening your preferences puts you in front of more women. It does nothing about what they think when they get there.

Each of those women decides quickly, from your first photo and a couple of lines of your writing. A dark, blurry lead photo, or prompt answers she has read a hundred times, gets passed over however many women see it.

My view is that apps reward a page that does well. In his experience, when women respond to your photos and profile, the app shows you to more of them. So part of the cure for an empty feed is being a man more women want to like back.

Look at your page the way a stranger would. Lead with a clear, recent photo of your face in good light, with nobody else in the frame. Follow it with photos from different days and places. Then write prompt answers specific enough that they could only have come from you, each with something she can easily reply to.

Sometimes the pool really is small. A small town, a quiet suburb, or a narrow age bracket will run out faster than a big city, whatever you do.

My advice for that case is practical. If one app has a small pool, get everything you can out of it, then add another app instead of waiting for the first to refill. He has seen plenty of men struggle on one app and do well on another.

Pace yourself as well. A man who goes through his whole feed in one Sunday night will see an empty screen by Monday. A short session each day spreads the same pool over weeks, and it gives new women time to join.

You run out of profiles on Hinge because Discover only shows women who fit your preferences and whose preferences you fit. Check "Show profiles outside of this preference" on the settings you would bend, and loosen the ones that were only guesses.

Then make sure your photos and prompt answers are strong enough to win over the extra women who start seeing you.