What tone actually gets replies? Flirty beats bold by 3x.

The tone sweet spot: flirty, not bold

SmoothRizz's tone slider goes from 0 (chill) to 100 (bold). Here is how each band performed across 7,445 sessions:

Flirty (61–80) wins. Not casual, not bold — flirty. That's the zone where replies feel confident enough to stand out but not so aggressive that you cringe when you read them back.

The most interesting finding is how badly bold performs. Over 1,000 people set their tone to maximum spice, but only 5.8% of them actually sent the reply. That's a massive gap between what people think they want to say and what they're willing to send.

This is consistent with Hinge's research on AI dating — their finding that people use AI as a “vibe-check” rather than a ghostwriter. People want to explore bold territory, but when it comes time to hit send, they pull back to something warmer and less risky.

Casual is the volume king — but not the send king

60% of all sessions (4,503 out of 7,445) land in the casual zone (21–40 on the slider). It's the default range, and it's safe. The copy rate is solid at 13.5% — but it's not the highest.

The people who deliberately slide up to flirty (61–80) are making a conscious choice to add energy — and that choice correlates with actually sending the message. They're not just browsing options; they're using the tool with intent.

Meanwhile, the confident middle (41–60) underperforms at just 7.9%. This is the uncanny valley of dating text tone: not chill enough to feel safe, not flirty enough to feel exciting. It's the zone where replies sound like a LinkedIn message.

People change their tone 5.7 times per session

42,218 tone adjustments across 7,445 sessions — that's 5.7 changes per session. The tone slider is the most-used feature in the entire app, beating out swipes (14,525), page views (16,386), and even the generate button (7,054).

What this means: people don't know what tone they want when they start a session. They experiment. They slide up, read the output, slide down, read again. The slider isn't a setting — it's a thinking tool.

A 2024 study by Chen and Toma found that socially anxious people prefer texting because it allows editing and revision. Our tone slider data is the same instinct made measurable: people need to see their options before they know what feels right.

Thursday is the best day to text your match

Copy rate — the percentage of sessions where someone actually sent a reply — varies significantly by day of week:

Thursday texters are 2x more decisive than Sunday texters. Why? Our theory: by Thursday, weekend plans are forming. People are making moves — asking for dates, suggesting plans. The urgency is real. By Sunday, the window has passed. People browse replies but don't commit.

This aligns with dating app usage data. Tinder reports peak activity on Sundays, but our data shows that high activity doesn't equal high commitment. Sunday has the most sessions (1,247) but the lowest send rate (8.0%). Volume and intent are different things.

Late-night texters actually send more

We compared sessions between 10pm and 6am (Eastern) to daytime sessions:

Late-night users send at a 14.4% rate vs 11.2% daytime. And counterintuitively, they choose calmer tones (40.4 avg spicy vs 44.4 daytime).

The pattern: someone at midnight with a conversation they need to reply to isn't browsing for fun. They're stuck, probably anxious, and they came to the tool to solve a specific problem. That urgency drives higher send rates.

The calmer tone selection makes sense too — at midnight, you don't want to send something you'll regret in the morning. Late-night texters are cautious but decisive. They know they need help and they use it.

Mobile users go 2x spicier — but rarely send

The web vs mobile behavior split is dramatic:

*Mobile copy tracking may undercount due to in-app clipboard behavior.

Mobile users set their tone to 72.1 on average — deep into the flirty-to-bold range — compared to 34.7 on web. But they swipe through far fewer options (0.5 vs 3.3) and don't engage as deeply with the output.

The theory: mobile users are in the moment. They're holding their phone, looking at a conversation in another app, and they want something bold to send right now. Web users are more deliberate — they paste a conversation, explore options, adjust tone, and carefully select.

Openers have an 18.6% send rate — replies 11.6%

When we break sessions by mode:

People are 60% more likely to send an AI-generated opener than an AI-generated mid-conversation reply. This confirms what we found in our earlier study — AI is better at starting conversations than continuing them.

An opener is lower-stakes because you're not trying to match an existing conversational tone. With mid-conversation replies, the bar is higher — the AI has to sound like you, in context, continuing a thread the other person already has expectations about. That's harder to get right, and the 11.6% send rate reflects it.

The overall picture: 81% rejection, 42K tone changes, and the search for the right voice

Across all 7,445 sessions:

The story these numbers tell is the same one from our first study, but bigger and clearer: people reject 81% of what AI gives them. Not because the AI is bad — but because they have a specific idea of how they sound, and they won't send anything that doesn't match it.

The 42,218 tone adjustments are the tell. People aren't lazily accepting first drafts. They're workshopping their voice through the tool, sliding back and forth until the output clicks. And when it clicks, it clicks in the flirty zone — not too safe, not too aggressive.

What this means for your texting

• Don't text on Sunday. Your instincts are at their laziest. Thursday and Friday are when you're most likely to commit to sending something good.
• Flirty beats bold. Going maximum aggressive feels fun in theory but you won't send it. Aim for warm and playful, not over-the-top.
• The confident middle is a dead zone. Too formal for dating, too stiff for flirting. Either go casual or go flirty — the middle reads like a work email.
• Late-night texting is fine. Despite the stigma, late-night texters are more decisive and choose more appropriate tones. If you're up at midnight needing to reply, go for it.
• Openers are easier. If you're struggling with replies, start by using AI for first messages where the stakes are lower and the results are better.

Methodology

All numbers are aggregate counts from SmoothRizz production data. Date range: January 1 through March 31, 2026. No message content was accessed. Tone is measured on a 0–100 integer scale via the spicy_level column. Copy rate = sessions with a non-null copied_response / total sessions. Time of day is converted from UTC to Eastern Standard Time. Event counts come from the funnel_events table. This study builds on our earlier analysis of 4,383 sessions with a larger dataset and tone-focused framing.