Your profile is your first filter
The most effective filtering does not start with other people's profiles but with your own. If you state clearly that you are looking for a relationship, what matters to you and what your life looks like, you deter exactly the people you did not want to meet anyway.
Clarity costs matches, but only the wrong ones. An honest profile with real text attracts people who read, think and reply. That is the audience you want.
Reading the signals in other profiles
Pay less attention to individual photos and more to the whole picture: is there text with substance? Are values, everyday life or plans mentioned? A profile made of photos and a single emoji also says something, namely how much effort someone was willing to invest.
Watch out for contradictions: someone who writes ‘something serious’ but avoids any concrete detail about their life and goals is usually keeping every door open. Seriousness shows in details, not in phrases.
The first message as an intention test
A message that refers to something specific in the profile is the simplest seriousness test in both directions. If you ask about content, you get answers about content, or none at all, and that too is valuable information.
Some apps build this principle right in: on embla there is the reply spark, a comment on a text prompt in the other person's profile that lands directly in their chat. Contact starts with content from the very beginning instead of a silent like.
Fewer contacts, more substance
Intentional dating ultimately means fewer parallel chats and more real ones. Three conversations with substance go further than fifteen that fizzle out after two messages.
If you filter like this, you leave the lottery behind. Your love life is then decided by your own criteria, not by the app.