How To Change Your Location in Bumble

Like most dating apps, whether you’re using Bumble for dating or simply to meet friends, you’re limited to matching with people in your local area. But what if you want to match with people from farther away?

Tinder lets users pay for premium features, including the ability to change your location at your discretion. Bumble, however, does not have a similar feature.

Instead, users who want to change their location will have to turn to some unofficial methods. In this article, I will show you how you can fake your location in Bumble.

Does Bumble Let You Change Your Location?

Though Bumble has a paid membership option called Bumble Boost, it’s very different than rival Tinder’s paid accounts, which allow users to change their location.

Bumble Boost gives you some additional features, including the ability to see everyone who has right-swiped your profile, an extension of your matches before the conversation expires, and the ability to rematch with those expired connections. However, changing your location is not one of these additional features.

Request a Location Change

There are no location settings in Bumble, and you cannot turn the GPS and WiFi location features off and trick Bumble into losing track of where you are. So what do you do if you need to change your location settings?

Simple — you ask Bumble to manually override your location settings. This will only work if you want to adjust your location. For example, perhaps you live ten miles outside of a major city in a completely dead suburb, and you’d rather show up as being in the exciting downtown core. You can submit a technical request to Bumble and there is a chance that they will adjust your location for you.

To request a location change, follow these steps:

1. Open Bumble.
   

   

2. Select your profile.
   

   

3. Tap Contact & FAQ at the bottom of the screen.
   

   

4. Tap Contact Us.
   

   

5. Tap Report a Technical Issue.
   

   

   
   
   

In the form that opens, enter your address change request. Say that the GPS in your phone is unreliable and glitchy and that you want to request a permanent location change.

Now, there are limitations to this method. They aren’t going to move you to London from Des Moines, and they aren’t going to do this for you more than once. Still, if all you need is a small, one-time, permanent relocation, then this is the easiest way to make that happen.

How to Spoof Your GPS in Bumble

Spoofing your GPS on your Android device isn’t something you’re necessarily going to want to do every day, but it is an interesting option to have available for apps like Bumble or Tinder. GPS spoofing allows you to change your location to somewhere brand-new in order to view dating profiles in whatever area you set yourself.

It’s not ideal for actually meeting up with people—remember, you’re still hundreds of miles or more away from them—but if you’re trying to get an idea of what the dating scene is like in your next vacation spot or in the place you plan on moving, it’s the perfect way to scout it out.

Follow along to learn how to spoof your location on both Android and iOS.

Android

Spoofing your GPS on Android is really easy with the Fake GPS Location app from the Play Store.

To start, you’ll need to enable the developer settings on your phone by following these steps:

1. Open the Settings menu on your phone.
   

   

2. Tap System.
   

   

3. Tap About Phone.
   

   

4. Tap Software Info.
   

   

5. Tap Build Number 7 times quickly.
6. Enter your phone’s lock code when prompted.

You now have access to the Developer Mode settings page under Settings->System->Developer Options.

Toggle Developer on if it didn’t turn itself on automatically and you’re ready to go.

The next step is to install the Fake GPS Location app from the Google Play store if you haven’t already.

Now you need to tell your phone to use the Fake GPS Location app as its GPS device.

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap on System.
3. Tap on Developer Options.
4. Scroll down to Select mock location app and tap on it.
   

   

5. Select the Fake GPS app.
   

   

Setting your new location for Bumble (and any other GPS-enabled app) is easy. Just open the Fake GPS Location app and navigate the map to your intended location. Hit the green Play button, and your phone now believes you to be wherever you have navigated to on the map.

To check whether it’s working or not, force close Bumble from your device by swiping it away from your recent apps list, then reload into the app. Check the location of your first match and compare it to your actual location.

Occasionally, Bumble may notice that you’ve changed your location and attempt to put you back in a place that matches your IP address. If this is the case you may also want to consider using a VPN to match your locations together. However, the app should reset your location to your spoofed address every time you reset the app, so if you run into any major issues, just reset it.

If it still isn’t working, check the app again and try to make sure your spoofing has been enabled. You can also try out using different apps to see if the first app you chose isn’t working properly on your phone. Also, make sure to check if your device’s GPS signal is on — it needs to be in order for GPS spoofing to work properly.

Ultimately, GPS spoofing can be a bit touchy, so it’s important to make sure that you keep troubleshooting the device if you run into any major issues.

iOS

There aren’t any free GPS spoofing solutions for iOS, but there is a very solid paid solution called iTools. iTools does more than GPS spoofing, but GPS spoofing is all we’re going to discuss here. You can download and install iTools for free, though the trial period doesn’t last long and if you decide to keep using the software you will have to pay for a license.

A single-user license costs $30.95. Note that you actually install and run iTools on a Windows PC or a Mac and then connect your iPhone to the computer via a data cable, similar to the way iTunes works.

Installing iTools is simple; just visit the link and download the free trial. Then follow these steps to set up GPS spoofing on your iPhone.

1. Click the Toolbox icon in the iTools panel.

   

2. Click the Virtual Location button in the Toolbox panel.

   

3. Enter the location you want to spoof your location to in the text box and click Move Here.

   

4. Use Bumble from your new location.
5. To end the GPS spoofing, select Stop Simulation in iTools.

   

It isn’t as elegant a solution as the Android platform offers, but it will get the job done.

Depending on your specific needs, you can always turn off the location on your phone or within the Bumble app, therefore, banning Bumble from seeing your location at all. You will still see and message those you’ve already connected with. If you’re concerned about privacy, this is a simple way to ensure the location feature is not telling others where you’re at when you choose.