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How To Reset Your Tinder Account

How To Reset Your Tinder Account
Can You RESET Your Tinder Account?!

Tinder completely revolutionized the dating scene by creating a simple yet fundamentally new mechanism for sorting out one’s potential mates. You, in essence, judge your potential new date/hookup/future life partner by swiping either left (no), right (yes), or up (really really yes).

Since both parties have to exert themselves with a right- or up-swipe for a conversation to take place, users can commence conversations knowing that there is at least a baseline level of interest – no more guessing about a coy partner’s unknowable level of interest.

However, the importance of Tinder in a person’s dating life can cause new problems to arise. For example, it isn’t all that hard to create a mess of your Tinder profile by making just a few bad choices or poor decisions. In such cases, one approach to solving the problem is to pull the plug on the old account and start fresh with a new account.

Perhaps you’ve ended a long relationship and your old Tinder profile just doesn’t do it for you anymore, or maybe you feel that getting the “newbie boost” (the temporary prominence that Tinder gives to new users in order to give them a positive experience with the app) is what’s needed to get your dating life back on track. Regardless of your reasons, there are a few different ways to get a clean start on Tinder. In this article, I will show you how to reset your Tinder account and start over.

What does resetting your Tinder account mean?

If you follow online message boards such as Reddit you will hear people talking all the time about “resetting their Tinder account”. What exactly does this mean? Well, it doesn’t mean just taking your existing profile, blanking everything out, and starting over. You can do that, but as far as Tinder is concerned it will be the same old account it always was.

You’ll keep the same ELO score, have the same bans or blocks in place, be associated with the same Facebook account, and so on. We aren’t talking about doing that kind of superficial reset here. Instead, the practice of “resetting your account” means actually creating a fresh new profile.

This new Tinder profile can either connect to a pre-existing Facebook account or can connect to an entirely new Facebook account. There are also some things you can do to rejuvenate your existing Tinder account without it being a major production. I’ll show you how to do all of these things.

The guerilla war: fixing your existing Tinder account

It may be that you don’t actually need to reset your Tinder account. There are things you can do to resolve issues with your existing account that are less time- and trouble-intensive than taking the more drastic steps below. Here are some things you can do to improve your existing account.

Evaluate your service level

Do you have a standard free Tinder account or do you subscribe to Tinder Plus or Tinder Gold? It’s entirely possible to have a great Tinder experience with just the free service but, depending on your needs, it might be worthwhile for you just to upgrade to the paid tiers of service.

The user experience is significantly better. You get to rewind mistaken swipes (which can save you a lot of trouble right there), and with Tinder Gold, you get the amazing benefit (for guys) of getting notified when someone has swiped right on you. Tinder Gold subscribers can basically just wait for their partners to swipe right and then decide whether to match with that person or not. We have a full-featured tutorial on all the different levels of Tinder and which one is right for you.

Revise your bio

The bio is the redheaded stepchild of most Tinder profiles – given the least attention and the most abuse. But for many people, the bio is super important in deciding whether or not to match. A bad bio or worse, a blank one, means you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back.

Writing a great bio can really increase the attractiveness of your profile without having to do a profile reset. See if our tutorial on writing a great dating app bio can help improve your game or our article on whether or not your Tinder bio matters.

Is it purge time?

One reason a lot of people decide to wipe their profile and start over is that they have a bunch of matches in their history that just didn’t work out, but for whatever reason they never unmatched. This clogs their feed and makes opening the app feel like an exercise in failure.

However, it doesn’t have to be that way, and you can get rid of old matches without going to the time and trouble of doing an account reset. Read our tutorial on how to delete all your Tinder matches and see if that helps your situation.

Is it a Location issue?

If you’re considering an account reset because you don’t want people to know where you are, there’s good news. You can actually change your location in Tinder pretty easily using our tutorial.

Are you trying to save money?

If you’re trying to save money by getting rid of your Tinder profile before an account subscription automatically renews, you should definitely read our article on whether or not Tinder account subscriptions auto-renew.

Is it your messaging?

Resetting your account gives you a fresh shot at the bio and the pictures, but if your weak chat game is what’s shooting you down then a reset isn’t going to help. Check out our tutorial on how to message effectively on Tinder and see if that helps your performance.

Just trying to unhook from Instagram?

Maybe you’re just trying to get your Instagram account and your Tinder account to stop communicating. There’s no need to do a reset to achieve that goal. We’ll teach you how to disconnect your Instagram and Tinder accounts.

Conventional war: using a pre-existing Facebook account

This is a tricky thing to pull off. The trouble is that Tinder basically views your Facebook account as being “you”, so if you are using the same Facebook account as you’ve been using, it’s going to be difficult to persuade their algorithms to treat you any differently.

More often than not, Tinder holds onto your data, even after you’ve reset and relinked your Tinder account with Facebook, which can make this method a bit challenging to get a hold of and to perform correctly. That said, thanks to Facebook’s slowly-improving usage of app data and the focus on removing specific content following the Cambridge Analytica breach from 2016, you might actually be able to refresh and reset your Tinder account using your basic Facebook profile that already exists.

This option isn’t a hard reset; it’s a soft reset you can use to clear your Tinder information and wipe the slate clean, while also keeping your existing Facebook account around. If you try this method and log back into Tinder, only to find nothing substantial has changed, you’ll need to skip down to the nuclear option as described below.

The ‘Nuclear’ Reset – With Facebook

To reset your Tinder account, grab your phone and a computer and let’s get started.

Open Tinder on your device and navigate into the Settings menu.

Select Delete Account, and follow the steps to delete your Tinder account.

Once your account is deleted, return to your device’s home screen and uninstall the app from your device.

Open Facebook and, from the arrow in the top-right corner of the display, select Settings.

Select Apps and Websites from the left menu and then Tinder from the list in the center.

Click the box and select ‘Remove.’

Return to your device, re-download Tinder, and set up an account using your existing Facebook account.

Assuming you’ve followed the steps correctly and your account information has been deleted from Tinder successfully, you’ll be able to sign back up for a Tinder account using your existing Facebook information. That said, you may also return to Tinder only to realize your deleted account has been reactivated through your Facebook login token, which will lead you to have to follow the steps below to begin anew with a fresh Facebook account.

Remember that, despite resetting your Tinder account with this method, you’re still pulling from the same Facebook profile. If you want to truly remove exes from your photos, or you want to start new with a different and unique set of photos for your Tinder account, you’ll need to work to remove those older photos from your Facebook account by deleting (or downloading and archiving) them from your account and uploading the new content you wish to display.

As a final note, some users have noticed that their account on Tinder doesn’t contain the option to delete their account from the app. If you’re finding that’s the case for your own account, you can edit your account preferences here, including the ability to delete your Tinder account from this web portal.

The nuclear option: using a New Facebook account with Tinder

This is the nuke-and-pave method. We’re going to wipe out your Tinder presence altogether and then create a new account with a new Facebook. This breaks the association between accounts in the Tinder database and gives you a genuine fresh start.

Note that Facebook does frown on this, and if you do something to call attention to your secondary account(s) they may well come down on you, but since there is no need to call attention to it, it’s an avoidable problem.

Start by following the above steps to begin deleting your Tinder account. You technically won’t need to delete a Tinder account from your old Facebook profile to reset, since you’ll be launching a new Facebook and logging in from there. That said, there’s also an obvious reason you’ll need to reset your Tinder account: duplicate accounts from the same person are never a good look on Tinder.

No matter whether you’re looking for a quick hookup, or you’re looking for something long-lasting, you’ll want to make sure that your account looks legitimate. By having multiple accounts with the same name and similar photos appear you lower the chances for potential matches to take you seriously; instead, your account may begin to appear as a fake account, and no one wants to be mistaken for a bot. So clear out that old account before creating the new one.

So, once you’ve deleted your Tinder account using the steps above, you can start moving towards starting fresh with both a reset Facebook account and a reset Tinder account. Log out of Facebook and, within a new tab, sign up for a shiny new email account. Any email service will work although Gmail is one of the most popular services on the market today and makes it easy to get set up and started with a new email address.

With your email in hand head back to the Facebook homepage to create your fresh account. For this walkthrough, we’ll use Gmail since it allows you to auto-confirm your email right from Facebook’s home page, as seen below. (Need some suggestions for free email providers? We’ve got a review of the best free e-mail services, the best free cloud-based email services, and the most secure email providers.)

With your new Facebook profile live and available to be used, you’ll want to spend some time customizing it before you jump right into Tinder. Add some friends, make an announcement that you’ve created a new Facebook, even post a link to your new profile on your old page if you want people to add you back.

Make it feel like a real profile, no matter how minimal you need or want it to be. You’ll need personal info on it to make Tinder a useful tool anyway so it’s better to lay the groundwork now than to continue to put it off. Once that’s done you can move onto the next step: signing back up for Tinder.

Signing up for Tinder can be done through the mobile app or on your computer, so if you’re sitting at your laptop and don’t feel like using your iPhone or Android device to accomplish this next step, don’t be afraid to just sign up for the app on your computer in order to skip past signing up on your phone.

Head over to Tinder’s website to start the process of signing up on your computer, a task which requires you to sign in to your Facebook account—the new one you just created, that is. With Facebook signed in on your PC you’ll be asked to verify that you’re a human using Google’s own captcha service, followed by verifying your phone number and using the number from a text to verify your code.

This method of verifying your mobile account is why it’s important to make sure you’ve closed off your former Tinder account before following through on signing up for Tinder once more. If you haven’t done that, or your phone number won’t work because of its status with your recently-closed account, use Google Voice along with the Gmail account you signed up for to create a new phone number you can use to verify your account. (We’ve got a tutorial on how to sign up for a Google Voice number if you need one.) We can confirm that Tinder allows Google Voice numbers to be used with the service without issue and that once you’ve imported your account you’ll be set to go.

Setting Up Tinder with a New Email

Fortunately, Tinder does let you create a new account with an email and phone number rather than Facebook. If you’re brand new to the platform it’s much simpler to bypass the Facebook option.

Simply create your Google Voice number (if you used your current phone number on a previous Tinder account) and email account, sign up, fill out your profile. Then, you’re all set to start swiping and making matches.

If you’re simply looking to take a break follow the instructions above to delete your account, but click the option to “Pause my Account” instead. Your card will be removed from the stack but you can easily reactivate your existing account when ready.

The Patient Approach: Wait Them Out

If you want to reset your account, but don’t want to have to go through the rigamarole of creating new e-mail addresses and new Facebook profiles there is another alternative open to you, if you have a little patience. Tinder deletes data from deleted accounts after three months or so. So if you delete your account on May 4, 2019, then wait until August 5, 2019 to create a new account on your same phone (using the same e-mail address and Facebook profile), then Tinder should have “forgotten” your history, match list, score, and all their other data.

How To Calculate and Increase Your Tinder Elo Score

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One thought on “How To Reset Your Tinder Account”

Hans Marqvardsen says:
For now, when I swipe left on a person, he/her becomes invisible to me. Similarly, when somebody swipes left on me, I become invisible for that person. I may later swipe right on that same, person, but to no avail. Useless to change our profiles and pictures, since we will never see those changes.
Hopefully, resetting Tinder will let the allow the new profiles to be seen.

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Robert Hayes

Jul 29, 2020

Robert is a freelance editor and writer living in Colorado.

132 Articles Published

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