The 10 Best Dating Apps for Finding Love (Or Fighting Boredom) in 2021
This is the year to try astrology-based algorithms, games as icebreakers, or video-first matching.
Spending a lot of time swiping these days? You’re not the only one; dating app use has soared during the pandemic as many of us spend more time isolated at home, searching on our phones for some sense of connection. Despite the many pitfalls of dating apps—the anxiety and loneliness, the unsolicited dick pics, the fake profiles, the bad pickup lines, and the ghosting—we keep playing the game, hoping we’ll end up on a FaceTime date with someone who makes all that swiping feel worthwhile.
There’s the dating app starter pack of Tinder and Bumble, of course, but there are also plenty of other apps to expand your digital dating horizons. Maybe you want to read someone’s astrological birth chart before sliding into the DMs? There’s an app (actually, two) for that. Maybe you have absolutely no idea what a “rising sign” is, but you need a little help starting the conversation? There’s an app for that. The following 10 dating apps are some of the newest and most popular to try out in 2021.
Tastebuds
Download
For music lovers out there, Tastebuds is an app that matches you with people based on the music you listen to. You can find concert buddies (for when venues can safely open again, sigh), friends, or potential partners—all through a shared love of your favorite bands and musical artists, which you add to your profile.
XO
Download
If you’ve ever felt sexual tension with an opponent on Words With Friends, XO could be the app for you. In XO, you play games with your matches to break the ice before you start chatting.
Hinge
Download
Hinge’s early advertisements-disguised-as-memes were slightly cringey. But as it turns out, the dating app that’s “designed to be deleted” is actually one of the best places to meet someone who’s looking for a relationship. When setting up your profile, you’ll choose from a list of prompts like, “Never have I ever...” or, “My Love Language is…” to display on your profile and help get the conversation going with potential matches.
Happn
Download
Walk past a cutie in a mask and want to get a closer look? You may want to try Happn, an app that’s sort of like Craigslist missed connections. It tracks your location and matches you with other users who are nearby, telling you how many times you’ve crossed paths with your potential new crush and giving you a built-in conversation starter. (For the security-minded, know that Happn never reveals your exact location to potential matches, just a radius.)
Struck
Download
Picture an app that looks like a bubblegum-colored AOL chat room and does the work of swiping for you. Skeptics are welcome on this astrology-based app, which matches you with potential friends and lovers by calculating compatibility from your full astrological birth chart—a set of personal characteristics supposedly determined by your birth time and place. Developed by former Apple engineers, Struck is currently up and running in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and New York City, and expanding.
NuIT
Download
Yes, this is another astrology dating app, but hear us out—this one is big on TikTok, where users are celebrating one particular feature: The app’s “I don’t want to see or be seen by straight people” setting. NuIT also presents you with different compatibility features on a spectrum, so you can see the many nuances of how you might astrologically click with a match.
Curtn
Download
Though developed pre-pandemic, the video-based app Curtn is perfect for These Times. User profiles are made up of videos where you’ll answer a variety of prompts, and you can video chat with matches in the app.
Coffee Meets Bagel
Download
Truly sick of swiping? Looking for a serious relationship? Try this “anti-swiping” dating app, which uses an algorithm to introduce you to new personalized matches every day.
Her
Download
Her is a "social" dating app designed for lesbian, queer, bisexual, and non-binary people, with a unique focus on community. On the app, you’ll find LGBTQ+ news, and groups where you can meet friends and potential matches to chat.
The League
Download
If you ever find yourself stalking crushes on LinkedIn, you’ll feel right at home on the League (if you can make it off the waiting list, that is). This membership-based app for young professionals promises “intelligent” dating, and asks you to connect your LinkedIn page so you can get down to business with people who are just as serious as you are.
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