How 2NIGHT works, step by step

This is the plain, complete description of what happens inside 2NIGHT — from creating an account to hiding yourself at the end of the night — written from the app's own code rather than from a pitch deck. Where a feature depends on a paid tier, it says so. Where the app does not do something people often assume dating apps do, it says that too.

1. Account and sign-in

You sign in with Apple or with an email code (a one-time passcode; no password to remember). Onboarding asks for a first name, an age (the selector starts at 18 — 2NIGHT is strictly for adults), a gender, up to six photos, a bio of at most 150 characters, and the kind of nights you are into. When you save a bio, it is checked against a short list of prohibited terms and refused if it matches; that is a narrow filter for the worst slurs, not a content-moderation system.

Optionally you can set who you want to see (everyone, women, men, non-binary people). Because that choice can reveal sexual orientation, it is stored on our servers only if you tick an explicit consent box; “Everyone” stores nothing at all. It is never shown to any other member.

2. Going live

2NIGHT uses a radius around your location and a nightly “Tonight” status that expires at 5 AM; your profile only appears in the feed while you are live, next to other people who are out that night.

The feed opens with a banner saying you are invisible until you set a status. Tap Set status, choose what you are up for — drinks, food, rooftop, music, culture, sports, games, nightlife, talk, coffee, walk, network — say whether you are open to dating, friends, both or networking, and add one optional line of text. Then choose how long to stay visible:

• Tonight (default): until the next 5 AM, when the nightly cleanup clears all stale statuses and the feed resets.
• 24 hours.
• Stay discoverable — a separate, clearly labelled control with 3 days, 1 week and always-on. These exist for travellers and quieter cities and are deliberately not shown as equals of “Tonight”, so the count of people out tonight stays truthful.

Once live, the header shows a “Live until HH:MM” chip and a Hide me button. Hiding takes you out of every feed immediately. The countdown you see near the end of the night counts toward the real 5 AM reset and only appears in the last three hours.

3. Location and radius

The feed is centred on your phone's location, read at roughly kilometre accuracy. Other members receive only a rounded distance in kilometres from the server; coordinates are never sent to anyone. If you do not go live for about 30 days, your stored position is snapped to your city's centre.

In the filter sheet, a Max distance slider runs from 1 km up to the cap for your tier: 5 km on Silver (free), 15 km on Gold, 50 km on Platinum Black. Gold and Platinum Black also have Travel Mode: search for any city and set your status there before you land; the feed re-centres on it.

4. The Tonight Feed

The feed is a deck of people who are live within your distance, optionally narrowed to a category. Swipe up or tap the button to ping; swipe down to pass. Silver members get a nightly allowance of free pings and can buy more; Gold and Platinum Black ping without limits. Gold and Platinum Black can also undo a pass. The header shows the real number of people currently live near you — never a fixed marketing figure. A “Likes you” view lists people who have pinged you; on Silver it is blurred.

5. Match and chat

A mutual ping is a match: a popup appears and a chat opens. The chat has a 48-hour window. When it expires it closes; Gold and Platinum Black can relaunch an expired conversation from a “past matches” list, while Silver members match again another night. Inside a chat you can send text, a photo like with a note, short video messages, and — on Gold and Platinum Black — private albums that the recipient can view a limited number of times.

There is a contact-details check on messages: free members cannot send phone numbers, social handles, emails or links, and phone numbers can only be exchanged between paid members. That is a membership rule, not a safety filter; nobody at 2NIGHT reads chats and the app does not scan them for abusive language.

Any match can start a two-minute video or voice call. Calls run peer-to-peer over WebRTC directly between the two phones and never pass through our servers (which also means, as on any peer-to-peer call, each side can technically see the other's IP address). Calls are free for everyone during the launch period.

6. Plans

A Plan is a public invitation: a place, a time, a short description. Members nearby see it in the Plans tab and can ask to join; the host can remove someone. Some plans require Gold to join. If someone in a plan has blocked you, or you them, the plan simply shows as unavailable — the app never reveals who is where.

7. Memberships and extras

2NIGHT is free to join and free to meet people. Three tiers exist: Silver (free), Gold and Platinum Black. Gold adds unlimited pings, the 15 km radius, a free Boost every week, Travel Mode, two private albums and chat relaunch. Platinum Black adds the 50 km radius, priority placement in the feed, three private albums plus a 50-second video. Boosts can also be bought individually. All billing is handled by Apple, renews until cancelled, and every price is shown in the app before anything is charged.

8. Safety tools

Report someone from their profile (the shield icon) or from the ⋯ menu in a chat, choosing inappropriate content, fake or scam, or harassment. Reports are confidential — no member, including the reporter, can read them back — and are reviewed by a person, usually within 24 hours and always within 72; the outcome is removal, a warning or closure, and every decision can be appealed by email. Block from the same two places: blocks are instant, silent and mutual, and reversible under Settings → Safety & privacy. There are no background or identity checks and no verification badge.

9. Your data

Data lives in Supabase (processed primarily in the EU); Apple handles sign-in, billing and push notifications. There is no analytics, advertising or crash-reporting SDK in the app and nothing is sold. You can export a copy of your data and delete your account from Settings; messages are deleted with the account. Details: Privacy Policy, Trust & Security.

2NIGHT is an alternative to Tinder, Bumble, Happn and Pure for people who want a spontaneous same-night date. 2NIGHT is iPhone-only and opens city by city — join the waitlist at 2night.co.