A Beginner's Guide on How to Use Hinge
Hinge might sound like all the other dating apps there are on the market, such as Tinder and Bumble, yet there is a difference - the app claims that they only match people for long-term relationships and declare themselves as a “relationship app”. How Hinge explains their platform, they claim to be an app “designed to be deleted”. What they mean by this is, their main goal is not to connect people for brief, irrelevant relationships, they want their users to find something lasting - which will make them delete the app after finding “the one”.
Up until 2017, Hinge used to get your potential matches through your Facebook account, and the look of the app was quite similar to Tinder, swiping left and right.
However, the app currently looks a bit similar to Facebook’s news feed - you scroll up and down like most other platforms.
How does Hinge work?
In order to set up your Hinge profile, you’ll need to follow these steps:
- Creating an account - The app is available for both Android (on Google Play) and iOS (App Store) users, but mobile-only. You’ll need to search for the app in the app stores, and install it. When you run the app, you will be given an option to log in using your Facebook, so the app can draw information directly from there, or you can create an account using your email.
- Creating your profile - you will be asked a series of questions, such as education, workplace, height, age, ethnicity. You can choose to hide any of these categories, not all of them have to be listed on your profile. Hinge also has a section where users can answer questions about smoking, drinking or drug use. These sections proved to be important for some users, especially if non-smokers don’t want to date smokers, and vice versa. You can choose the age range of your interest, sex, radius, and so on.
- Selecting your photos - Hinge has a set number of photos you need to have on your profile. You will need to find six photos of yourself to create your account fully. Make sure to think twice about the photos you’ll choose to post on your account.
According to online dating professionals, try avoiding selfies, or bathroom mirror photos. Try posting images of yourself from your travels, your nights out, and try posting photos without sunglasses on.
- Answer Hinge’s prompts - Hinge has a wide range of prompts to answer. You will be asked to answer three of those, and they sound something like “We would get along if…”, “I know the best spot in town for…”. You will need to answer these questions in 150 characters or less. Try being original and funny, this will attract many more users to your profile, and it’s giving them a chance to start a conversation easily.
- The matching part - unlike other dating platforms you might be used to, Hinge offers you to like a certain section of a user’s profile, it can be an answer to the prompts, it can be a photo of them or even some of the basic information included in the profile.
Let’s say you went to the same college - you can like that section only, and you can send them a message along with the like. This feature has proven to be an amazing conversation starter since it’s different from most other dating platforms. If the user likes you back, it will officially be listed as a match, so you can start texting.
Hinge lists one profile at a time, so you can either choose to like something from the user's profile, or you can keep scrolling.
- Free or paid membership of Hinge - there is a free and a paid version of Hinge. The paid one, Preferred Membership, allows users to send unlimited likes. Once you’ve created your account, you will be offered a free trial of the paid version for a month. However, after the free trial expires, Hinge requires the users to pay in order to keep those advantages, the prices are $19.99 for one month, $39.99 for three months, $59.99 for six months.
If you choose to opt-out of paying for Hinge, your likes will be limited to 10 per day.
- Likes or roses - instead of sending a like to someone, you can send them a rose. The rose puts your reply on top of their list, and you get only one for free per day. You can buy more roses to send out, they come as packages of three, twelve or fifty.
- Standouts - the standouts section is where Hinge uses their algorithm to try and set users up based on the answers from the prompts. Each day you’ll be given several accounts as recommendations that could be potential matches, so you can scroll through them and see if Hinge is doing a good job finding you a match!
- Virtues, vitals, vices, preferences, dealbreakers - these are all categories that users can fill in in the app. These are actually truly helpful, since most people know what would work for them and what would not! Try being as sincere as possible, lying on the app will not keep the truth hidden for too long, especially when you find a match on the platform and you start dating them.
- Hinge discover - the ‘Discover’ section is basically the ‘swiping’ area on Hinge. Here you’ll be seeing the user’s profiles, where you can like sections, or simply scroll past them. Bear in mind that if you’re using the free version of the app, you’re limited to 10 likes per day.
If you are using Grindr instead, but want to delete your account, read how to do that in our post.
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