Why Is Plenty of Fish Not Working?

When Plenty of Fish or your profile is not working, the cause is usually one of four things. The app may be out of date, your connection may be weak, your login may be failing, or a verification may not have gone through. Plenty of Fish's app FAQ tells people with problems to update to the most recent version and to check that they are connected to their network or wifi. Work through those in order, and then look at verification and what the profile looks like to a woman.

Plenty of Fish's app FAQ gives two steps for app trouble. Update to the most recent version from the App Store or Google Play, and check that you are connected to your network or wifi.

Do both properly. Open the store and see whether an update is waiting. Then load a website to confirm your connection is working, and switch between wifi and mobile data if it is not. These two steps fix more broken sessions than anything cleverer.

Close the app fully after you update and open it again, so you are not running half of the old version.

If the trouble is that you cannot log in, the FAQ says to confirm you are using the right username and password. It also says to tap the question mark icon for login help.

Slow down on the password. On a phone, a wrong letter or a capital that switched on by itself is the usual culprit. Type it where you can see it, and if it still fails, use the question mark and follow what the app offers.

Selfie verification is a separate thing, and it is a common reason a profile seems stuck. Plenty of Fish offers it through the Safety Toolbox, the shield with a heart at the top right of Profile, where you choose Get Verified.

A few rules sit behind it. Verification is not required to create an account. You need a primary profile photo uploaded first, because the selfie is matched against that photo. The selfie is not shown on your profile.

The rule that trips men up is the last one. If you change your main profile photo later, you need to verify again. So a man who swapped his lead photo last week and then wonders why his badge vanished has the whole answer.

Do the selfie in daylight, facing the camera, with no hat and no sunglasses, so the match is easy to make.

Plenty of Fish lists reasons a message may not send. You may have sent many similar or copy and pasted messages. You may have used flagged words. The woman may have messaging restrictions that stop you from contacting her. Or you may not meet the age restrictions.

If sending is the only thing broken, work out which of those fits. A line you pasted to six women in an hour is the likeliest cause. a dating coach says the same about dating sites that suspend an account for sending an identical message over and over. Write each opener to something on her page, and the problem goes away on its own.

Plenty of men say the profile is not working when the app is fine and the results are poor. That is a different problem, and a better one, because you can fix it without waiting for anyone.

Start with the lead photo. My rule is that a woman judges you by your worst photo, so cut any picture that is only okay. Then read your headline and your bio the way a stranger would. If they could describe any man, they will get lost among a hundred others. My advice is to say one specific thing about your life and end on a question she can answer in a sentence.

If a profile is clearly visible and still gets little, the photos, the headline and the bio are where to put your effort, ahead of the settings.

My last point is a practical one. Different apps suit different cities and different men, and a man who struggles on one often does well on another. If Plenty of Fish is acting up and you have fixed what you can, spend the same time on a second app.

That way a technical problem on one app never becomes a gap in your week.