Why Are Your Tinder Messages Not Sending?

Tinder's advice for a message that will not send starts with your connection. Switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data, then delete and reinstall the app so you are on the latest version. Once you are back in, resend it: on an iPhone, tap the red exclamation mark next to the failed message, and on Android, tap the message itself.

Tinder's first suggestion is to switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data. A message that sits there without going through often comes from a phone that is not really online, even when the signal bars say it is.

Hotel Wi-Fi that dropped you an hour ago, a basement with one bar, a crowded stadium where everyone's phone is fighting for the same signal: all of them look connected and are not. Turn Wi-Fi off and try on mobile data, or switch the other way, then open the conversation again.

If the connection is fine and the message still will not go, delete the app and install it again. Tinder says this gets you the latest version of the app, and an out-of-date version can be the reason something as basic as sending stops working.

If it was a message you took some care over, copy it into your notes before you delete anything. Then you are pasting it back in, not rewriting it from memory at midnight.

Once you are back in the app, find the message that did not go through and send it again.

• On an iPhone: tap the red exclamation mark next to the failed message.
• On Android: tap the message itself to try sending it again.

Give it a few seconds to go through before you touch anything else.

The worst part of a stuck message is usually not technical. A man sends a good opener, hears nothing for a day, and decides she is not interested. Then he opens the conversation and sees the red mark. She never got it.

So when a conversation goes quiet, look at whether your last message actually went before you read anything into her silence. With texting, you sometimes end up writing twice through no fault of your own, because a message never arrived or she was busy when it did. A failed send is the plainest case of that there is. Nothing happened between you. The app just did not deliver.

When the first try fails, some men tap resend again and again, or type the same line out a second time. She then wakes up to three copies of the same joke. Tap resend once. If it still fails, go back to the connection and the reinstall before you try again.

Keep this separate from a message that did go through and simply got no answer. That is a different situation. A second line a day or two later is fine there, as long as it is a new line and not the old one sent again.

Do not bolt an apology onto it either. "Sorry, the app ate my message" puts you on the back foot over something that was never your fault. Every text you send already carries a little neediness, simply because you are the one reaching out. An apology for a glitch adds more of that for no reason. If the message arrives a day late, it just arrives. If a lot of time has passed, a fresh, light line works better than an explanation of what went wrong with your phone.

A message you have to send twice should at least be worth reading. Keep it short and make it about her: one detail from her photos or from what she wrote, turned into something she can answer in a line.

If the line that failed was "hey," do not resend it. Write a real opener instead. The glitch has handed you a second go at a first impression, so use it. If her photos show her on a ski lift, "Were you actually skiing, or just there for the hot chocolate?" is short, about her, and easy to answer.

Then, once she is clearly enjoying the conversation, move it toward a plan. Things only move forward once you get her out on an actual date, so a conversation that is going well should not live in the app for weeks.

Switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data, reinstall to get the latest version, then resend: the red exclamation mark on an iPhone, a tap on the message itself on Android. Resend once, skip the apology, and check that your last message went through before you decide a woman has gone quiet on you.