How do I tell if someone is a chaser?
You usually know within ten messages. Here is what you are looking for.
You do not need to be certain, and you will not be. You need enough signal to decide whether to keep spending your evening on this conversation. That is a much lower bar, and it is reachable quickly.
Read the profile before the messages
No face photo, or no photos at all. An empty bio, or one that lists only what they are looking for. A profile written entirely about their preferences and containing nothing about who they are. Any of these on their own means little; together they are a pattern.
The clearest signal is a profile that mentions trans people as a preference and mentions nothing else at all. Someone who has written one line about what they want from you and zero lines about themselves has told you what this is.
Watch where the first three messages go
Count how many exchanges pass before your body comes up. If it is in the opening message, you have your answer. If it is by the third, the odds are poor.
Notice whether they use your name. Notice whether they ask you anything that is not about being trans. Someone interested in you will ask about your work, your weekend, the thing in your photo. Someone interested in the category has no reason to.
Notice the secrecy
Pushing to move off the app immediately. Refusing a video call at any point. Wanting to meet only at night, only indoors, only at one of your homes. Being unwilling to be seen with you anywhere public, ever.
Some of this is explicable — plenty of people are private, and some have good reasons not to be out themselves. But secrecy combined with urgency is a specific combination, and it rarely means anything good.
The test that settles it
Change the subject to something ordinary and see what happens. Ask what they are watching, what they do on a Sunday, what they would argue about at a party. It is a normal question that any interested person answers without effort.
Someone who is there for you answers and asks you back. Someone who is there for a category gives you one flat line and steers straight back. The drop in energy is unmistakable once you have seen it twice.
Then act on it without a discussion
Block. You do not owe an explanation, a warning, or a chance to do better. Explaining almost never changes the outcome and it costs you an hour and your evening.
And keep in mind that being wrong occasionally is cheap. Blocking someone who was merely awkward costs you one possible date. Staying in a conversation that has already told you what it is costs considerably more.