How to avoid chasers on dating apps: settings and where to look

You cannot switch chasers off with a single setting, because no app can read why someone is interested in you. What you can change is decided before the first message: which app you use and who it lets in, who can see your profile, what that profile says, and what is allowed to reach your inbox. This page goes through those choices on several widely used apps. Reading the messages themselves is a different skill, covered in how to tell if someone is a chaser.

Start with who the app lets in

The most important setting is not inside the app. It is the app's own answer to who may join, and it is usually written in plain words in the store listing or the help centre. Read it before you read anything else.

Some apps built around trans people say openly that they are also for people who want to date trans people. Translr's App Store listing names admirers among the people it is for, alongside allies. Butterfly's website says every gender and every sexuality is welcome, as long as members are open to dating trans people. These are stated designs, not hidden flaws, and our pages on Translr and Butterfly read each listing in full. But an app that invites admirers is an app where you should expect to meet them, and no filter inside it changes who was let through the door.

General apps admit everyone. Queer apps draw the line elsewhere: HER, for example, says it is for the LGBTQIA+ community and names trans women, trans men and non-binary people. That still describes who may join, not how they behave. In an analysis of 624 survey responses from LGBTQ+ dating app users in Canada, published in 2025, researchers at Concordia University's DIGS Lab found that objectification and fetishisation were common for trans and non-binary participants. The trans dating apps compared sets out who five of these apps admit, in their own words.

Decide who can see your profile

By default, most apps show you to anyone whose search settings include you. A few settings narrow that, and it is worth knowing which ones cost money.

• Incognito modes take your profile out of the general pool. Tinder lists incognito among its Tinder Plus features, Bumble includes it in Premium and Premium+ and says only people you have liked will see you, Grindr puts it in Unlimited, and HER in HER Premium. On all four, this most direct control over who sees you is part of a paid tier.
• OkCupid has a setting that comes close. If your profile is set as gay or bisexual, you can choose in the Privacy settings not to see or be seen by straight people, whatever your other preferences say. It is only offered to profiles with those two labels. OkCupid's Incognito is paid, and the company says to get in touch if paying for it would be a hardship.
• Turning off Discovery on Tinder stops your profile being shown to anyone new. People you liked before can still see you and match with you.
• On Grindr you can switch off Show Me in Explore Searches, so people who are not nearby cannot browse your area and find you there.

The gender you enter shapes your audience too. Tinder says the way you identify your gender influences whose searches you appear in, so picking a category also means picking who is shown your profile. That is worth knowing, not a reason to describe yourself as anything other than who you are.

Choose what your profile says

Several large apps let you record your gender and keep it off your public profile. Tinder lets you show it below your name, hide it completely, or show only some parts, and says it tries to remove it automatically for LGBTQIA+ users in places where their identities are criminalised or stigmatised. Hinge has a Visible on Profile box for gender, sexuality and pronouns. Bumble lets you choose whether to show your gender or keep it private.

Whether to use those options is a real trade-off, and trans people come down on both sides of it. In a 2024 study by Michael Ann DeVito and colleagues, built on six rounds of discussion with 25 sapphic dating app users, one participant said that detailed identity information on a profile could lead to more issues with chasers. Another said she no longer disclosed being trans on dating apps, and told people once she got closer to them. Saying it up front has its own advantage: people who would react badly remove themselves before you have spent an evening on them. Do I have to tell someone I'm trans? weighs both sides.

The same researchers suggested a design that takes some of the sting out of the choice: the app uses identity information for search and matching without showing it to everyone who opens your profile. When an app offers to hide a field, that is the question to ask of it. Does hiding it only change what strangers read, or also who can find you by it?

Filter what reaches your inbox

Some tools sit between strangers and you. None of them is aimed at chasers by name, but each can catch part of what gets sent.

• Hinge's Comment Filter, under Settings and then Safety, hides likes whose comments contain words, phrases or emojis you add to a list, and an automatic filter catches disrespectful language. Filtered likes go to a Hidden Likes section without a notification, the sender is not told, and you can delete them without reading them.
• Bumble's Private Detector automatically blurs photos in chats that may be explicit, and lets you view the image, delete it, or block and report the sender.
• Tinder's Photo Verified Chat, available once you are photo verified yourself, means only other photo-verified people can message you.
• HER Premium adds filters for gender identity and for Pride Pins, which include T4T.

Two cautions. Verification only shows that someone looks like their photos, so a chaser using their own face passes it. And a filter that helps you find trans people can help anyone find trans people. In DeVito's study, one participant worried that trans-specific filters would enable chasers, while a non-binary participant who said she had had the best luck with t4t dating wanted to be able to filter for other trans people, as long as it was presented carefully. Both points hold at once.

Hide, block and report: what each one does

The buttons look alike but do different jobs, and the difference matters when someone keeps coming back.

• Hiding, on Grindr, removes a profile you have not chatted with from your grid and removes you from theirs, without telling them.
• Unmatching, on Tinder, takes you off each other's match lists for good, and the other person is not notified. Where it is available, you can block at the same time, so neither of you can view the other's profile.
• Blocking, on Bumble, removes the person from your matches and prevents future contact. They are not told, and it cannot be undone.
• Reporting sends the account to the app's moderators. Bumble's list of reasons includes unsolicited sexual content and hate aimed at gender identity, it says you do not need to be certain a rule was broken, and its safety features page states that fetishisation is banned.

Take screenshots before you unmatch or block. On Bumble, once you have unmatched someone and lost access to their profile, a report has to go through the support team, with their name and any screenshots you kept. What to do about harassment sets out the order that keeps your evidence.

Where to look instead

The other route is to date among other trans people, so one question, whether someone is there for you or for a category, mostly stops coming up. T4T dating happens in tags on general apps, on apps built around trans people, in communities that are not dating apps at all, and on platforms made only for trans and non-binary people. Where t4t dating actually happens goes through each, with what to check before trusting a place that calls itself t4t.

Each has limits. A t4t tag on an app that admits everyone is only as honest as the people writing it, and HER's filter for the T4T pin sits in a paid tier. Groups, forums and local events move more slowly than an app, and where to meet trans people offline has practical places to start.

Apps made only for trans people mean fewer people nearby, which is their usual cost. T4TSpace, a dating app by and for trans and non-binary people, is one of them. Every account on it is checked by a person, to confirm a real adult whose selfie matches their main photo. Nobody's gender is checked, so we can't promise that everyone on it is trans.

What no setting can do

Settings sort people by what they told the app. Someone who lies about why they are there, or who stays perfectly polite until the fifth message, gets past every one of them, verification included. That is why reading people still matters, and what a chaser is describes the pattern to look for.

So aim to cut the volume rather than end it. Ten minutes spent on who an app admits, who can see you and what is allowed to reach you can save a great deal of blocking later, and leaves the block button for the few who still get through.