As we near the end of the 2010s, it’s clear that no technology has held a greater influence over our lives than the smartphone. First reaching peak success with Apple’s iPhone and followed closely with Google’s own Android OS (driven primarily by the sales of the Motorola Droid and, more recently, Samsung’s Galaxy S-line), smartphones have replaced so many gadgets, institutions, and social constructs that it’s often difficult to keep track. Your smartphone has taken the place of your iPod, your GPS, and your camera. You don’t carry around a flashlight, a calculator, or an e-Reader anymore. You purchase things from your hand instead of the store, buying groceries, airline tickets, and takeout all from the same device in seconds. You might not even think about it this way, but your phone has become your main computer, the device you use the most in your day-to-day life.
With smartphones replacing physical objects in our life, it’s no surprise they’ve replaced plenty of our social interactions as well. We all have a group text with our family or friends going on, where jokes are shared and plans to meet up made. More recently, the smartphone has completely revolutionized dating and meeting people socially. Apps like Tinder and Bumble have gone a long way in removing the social stigma around online dating, creating millions of matches and thousands of relationships. While Tinder, much like early online dating in the 2000s, was originally seen in a negative light, the app’s been around for over half a decade and younger audiences—mainly the millennial market Tinder has aimed for throughout its history—have become relatively comfortable with the concept of meeting people through swipes and apps. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in their twenties who didn’t know a couple that met through Tinder.
But not all Tinder matches are made in heaven. When you’re using the app, it can be exciting to find a match. When you and the other user have both swiped right on each other’s profiles, you can begin a conversation, introducing yourselves to one another and generally speaking about your interests, personality, and hobbies. While this can lead to plenty of great conversations—and potentially great dates—often times you’ll find a connection isn’t properly made, or is lost in translation between two users. If you’ve ever found yourself in a conversation with another Tinder user, only to find they’ve suddenly disappeared, or you’ve received a notification of a new match, only to open your app and find a lack of new notifications, this is the guide for you. Here’s how to tell if you’ve been unmatched on Tinder.
TINDER REBOOT
First things first—start by closing and restarting the Tinder application on your phone. On iOS, this is done by double-tapping on the Home button on the iPhone 8 and earlier. If you own the new iPhone X, you’ll need to either swipe up from the bottom of the display and hold your finger for a moment, or swipe up and to the right to open your list of apps. Find the Tinder application in your list of running apps on your phone and swipe up to force close the app from your device (on the iPhone X, you’ll need to long press on the app and click the red X in the corner of the app). Once you’ve successfully close the application, restart the app to see if the conversation and match have returned to your account.
On Android, most devices have a dedicated Recent Apps button, either on the hardware of the device (Galaxy S7, S7 edge, etc.) or within the virtual buttons on your display (Google Pixel, LG G6, Galaxy S8, etc). Unlike iOS, apps are presented in a vertical carousel, not horizontal like iOS. Still, force closing an app is completed the same way as iOS—swipe away the app from your list. On Android, you can also head into your App settings to force close the app without swiping it away from your Recent Apps.
Once you’ve cleared the app from your device, reopen Tinder and check both your conversations and your notifications. It’s possible a missing conversation or match notification was an error, accidentally disappearing from your list of conversations. If your missing conversation or notification haven’t reemerged after restarting the app, it’s possible the other individual removed you from your matches. Often this results from an accidental swipe right, though obviously if a conversation had begun, the other person might have decided to end the match based on a potential mismatch between you and the other user. There’s no reason to take this too much to heart, especially if a conversation hadn’t happened yet. Simply move on and continue swiping and creating other matches in the app.
You can first resort to fully closing out of the Tinder app (force quitting if needed) and restarting it, just to make sure the app is not glitching out. However, if you’re still unable to find that person that you thought was possibly the next special someone in your life, the chances are that person unmatched you. You will no longer see that person in your list of matches and all your conversation history will also be gone.
CONSIDER YOURSELF BLOCKED
If you have been unmatched, either before or after a conversation, you might be determined to find that lost connection in a sea of other fish. Unfortunately, Tinder will essentially remove you and that person from the dating pool, eliminating any chances of you and the other person finding each other once you’ve been unmatched on the service. While this isn’t an official blocking per se—something you can totally do on Tinder—it does function as a soft-block between you and the other person on the service. Whether your the person unmatching yourself from someone else, or the individual being unmatched on Tinder, you and that person will no longer be able to see each other within your current accounts.
READY TO START OVER?
All this is to say, if you’re really concerned with finding the mismatched user through Tinder, the only true option is to start your account over, removing all limitations and blocks from your account, and rematching with past users using your new account. This also requires creating a new Facebook profile, since you’ll have to recreate your Tinder profile from scratch within the app itself. Don’t get us wrong—mistakes can happen, and perhaps the unmatch was a mistake on the other user’s part. You can spend years wondering if that person was the one for you, or you can move forward, allowing yourself the freedom to date and meet new people on Tinder without any sort of emotional baggage.
If you are absolutely certain this person would be a total match for you, you’ll need to go through the process of recreating your Facebook account. This can be a pain, but if you have about half an hour of free time, you can set up a new Facebook and Tinder account in no time. Still, we recommend staying away from this option if you’re serious about dating on Tinder. Because users can view your social media, you’ll be less likely to pick up matches if your account looks fake or new. Since your new Facebook account connected to Tinder will likely have zero friends, you may be seen by others on the site in a negative light. If you do choose to start over, keep that in mind as you head forward on your journey.
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Overall, however, we recommend sticking to finding new matches on the service. It just isn’t healthy to be kept up on a single guy or girl, especially when users are unmatched on a daily basis. Typically, there’s almost nothing personal about being unmatched—we all have our own personal preferences in the men and women we find attractive, and what one user doesn’t see in you, another user might just be a perfect match. Mistakes can happen, and just because someone matched and unmatched with you doesn’t mean the end of the world. It’s healthy to think of it more as an accidental like on Facebook or Twitter than a true, insulting error. Remember to keep your head up when it comes to Tinder matches. Smartphones may have revolutionized the world around us, but heartbreak still exists online.
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