For a company that’s completely based around images, Tinder has some arcane, unwritten rules around image uploading and compression, which, if not followed, will lead to your photos looking like complete trash, even if they’re high quality.
Luckily, I’ve spent quite a bit of time running my own tests to determine what does and does not trigger the compression. I haven’t seen anyone else on the internet writing about this, so if this advice spreads, remember you heard it here first!
- Photos must be under 800px max width. If you upload a photo over this width, it will automatically trigger Tinder’s compression.
- Photos must be under 100kb in size. If you upload a photo over this size, it will automatically trigger Tinder’s compression. In order to limit the filesize, use a photo editor that lets you control the JPEG quality. I recommend Adobe Photoshop for the PC.
- You must never zoom in on your photo with Tinder’s built in photo “cropper”. Moving the reticules around to center it is fine, but if you pinch to zoom in on the image, even just a little bit, it will trigger the compression. This means you need to upload photos that are already precropped to Tinder’s intended ratio of 1:1.
Pancake Mouse 
When you upload a square image, Tinder zooms in and display it 7:10.
So my question is, which of the following options would yield the highest photo quality:
– Uploading 640×640 px (1:1)
– Uploading 800×800 px (1:1)
– Uploading 640×848 px (7:10)
… assuming they are all below 100kb in file size.
According to many guides on the Internet, Tinder automatically zooms in and displays your images as 640×848 px, so wouldn’t it be better to upload this instead?
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You should run a test and respond back here in the comments! Happy to update this post accordingly.
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Device type apparently also has a big impact on image quality: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tinder/comments/95u67s/fyi_photo_quality_depends_on_upload_device_ipad/
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Yes, this matches with what I’ve seen. Tinder’s iPhone experience has always been superior to their Android experience. I’m guessing he would have gotten the same results on the iPhone.
Worth noting that that post is two years old and Tinder is changing things all the time, though.
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