If you’ve burnt out dating apps and feel like you’re in a bottomless hellhole of poor-quality potential suitors, this viral TikTok might offer hope—or at least a fresh slate.
Creator Stella (@stellabr8) in December posted a video about a “hack” for the popular dating app Hinge, and viewers in the comments said it worked for them. “Did everyone know this or am i just dumb,” the creator wrote in the TikTok caption.
The video has almost 735,000 views and more than 70,000 likes.
In the video, Stella explained that she went to delete the Hinge app from her phone.
“I’m over it. I’m done with Hinge. I’m done with dating, and I’m done being discouraged, because I’m so sorry, everyone is atrociously ugly. No offense,” she said.
When she went to delete the app, a prompt appeared, asking her if she really wanted to ditch Hinge or if she just wanted to ”refresh” her feed, she said.
“So essentially it gets rid of the algorithm of everyone it thinks that I would like,” Stella said.
The creator chose the refresh option. Sure enough, she said, “suddenly, I’m seeing the hottest guys I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Like, I literally ran out of likes on Hinge within five minutes.” Usually, she likes one guy in every 200, she said, but the refreshed feed found her hitting that like button with gusto.
“I don’t know if everyone knew about this, but if you didn’t, give it a try,” Stella encouraged viewers.
Other Hinge users took to the comments on TikTok to confirm similar experiences.
@stellabr8 Did everyone know this or am i just dumb #hinge #dating #hingedating #datingapps #chicagodating ♬ original sound – Stella
“I just did this and I’m actually baffled,” one person commented. “Actually so helpful since I’m trying to go on a date a week.”
Another commenter wrote, “Girl! I downloaded hinge for the first time in months and all of a sudden there’s the hottest guys in my area.”
“Girl why did i just do this and my jaw dropped at the first man that popped up,” a viewer chimed in.
A few viewers had more mixed results.
“I did it and it’s good for a day and goes back to the mid people yet it tells me ‘we’re showing you the 1%’ like in WHICH world,” one comment read.
“It never even gave me the option of refreshing mine, it gave the option to pause,” someone else commented.
“I did this and it totally worked, but the amount of likes back was so much less. Guess I was just too beautiful for them to respond,” a viewer commented, adding a laughing emoji at the end.
“All it did for me is give me back all the likes of people I didn’t like back originally lol,” another person wrote.
One commenter came with a tip: “It came up when I went to delete and selected that I was unhappy with hinge, the other prompts that option didn’t show! For ppl trying to find it.” Stella replied, “OOOOOO YES GOOD CALL.”
“If you don’t get the offer to refresh, the same thing happens if you just delete it and download it again!!” another comment read.
In an email to the Daily Dot, a representative for Hinge declined to comment on the TikTok. The Dot also reached out to Stella via email.
Hinge famously brands itself as the dating app “designed to be deleted.” On its website, the company states its mission as, “We want to create a less lonely world by inspiring intimate, in-person connections.”
The dating app’s FAQ doesn’t mention an outright option to “refresh” your algorithm, but it does include some information on how its matching process works. “Hinge uses a Nobel-Prize-winning algorithm that helps you go on better quality dates, not just more dates,” according to the company. “You’re eight times more likely to have a great date with your Most Compatible suggestions, aka the people you’re most likely to have mutual chemistry with.”
Hinge’s FAQ also says that the app suggests potential dates based on user-set preferences (like age and distance) and more nebulous probability factors based on previous interactions in the app, which are “used to continually adjust the predictions as the recommendation algorithms learn more about your preferences and mutual compatibility,” according to the website.
As Elle points out, you can “reset” your algorithm by deleting your Hinge profile and starting again from scratch—so, not really a reset, but of course that would give you a shiny new lease on algorithmic life. However, you lose all your previous interactions that way. The Hinge website makes it clear that simply deleting the app from your phone is not the same thing as closing your existing account.
We tried out Stella’s hack, and the Hinge app prompted us to pause our account instead of offering an option to refresh the algorithm, like that one commented on TikTok. However, we also just installed it and hadn’t been sifting through potential dates too long.
In September, another TikTok creator and Hinge user posted a video about how to “trick” the app to get “people you would ever actually be interested in.”
