Tinder Redesign Puts Bigger Focus on Photos

Tinder is rolling out an app redesign that allows you to browse through a potential match's photos without having to open their profile. By tapping on the left or right half of a picture, you can now easily navigate to the previous or next photo. Since a single tap used to open up the complete profile, Tinder has moved that action to the bottom of the card, the part that contains name, age and other details.

Photos are also bigger than before, and they now extend to the edge of your screen. The visual and UX changes bring the dating app more in line with Snapchat, Instagram Stories, and fellow dating app Hater, all of which allow you to navigate between images in the exact same way.

The change means your photos now play a bigger role in the armchair dating experience, since the tap experience is much more intuitive than having to open someone's profile, and then swipe through their pictures. With the new design, you can also easily tell the number of pictures a user has uploaded on Tinder.

Beyond the redesign, the bigger changes are under-the-hood improvements, including a new app architecture called Discover, and the move from Objective-C to Swift, Apple's open-source programming language. Garo Hussenjian, iOS architect and engineering manager at Tinder, has written a long post on why the team felt the need to rewrite the app from the ground up.

With regards to Swift, Hussenjian added that it's "no longer the future of iOS development", but "the present". He believes the new swipe experience is "smoother" thanks to the new app architecture, which in turn is "leaner" thanks to Swift.