I’ve been working on reverse-engineering Grindr and creating an open source client implementation for it since March.
When GrindrPlus closed, my project turned out to be its de-facto successor and immediatelly several thousands of people started following it. Now it has 70k+ downloads on Forgejo and the authorship is dedicated to public domain :)
- MIT licensed, no ads, no analytics, no trackers, no diagnostics, no statistics, no telemetry, only opt-in updates checking
- Signed releases, reproducible builds on all four platforms, full transparency
- And it’s now in Google Play (for the time being) and being reviewed for F-Droid!
Already applied for Apple developer enrollment and going to publish this to EU alt stores as well as in the TestFlight. Then a classic unsigned ipa and also going to attempt Apple AppStore just for completeness.
You need an existing Grindr account. Downloads: https://opengrind.org/download
Questions and criticism welcome.
It wont be hard to out do the grindr app. I swear they’ve done zero optimizations throughout my life of using it.
I just showed this to my grindr user friend who is quite excited and is going to share it in the Portland Oregon community. He really appreciates the paywall/ad bypass.
I tried another third party Grindr client and my account got instantly banned, and the official app doesn’t support GrapheneOS. So not sure how to create an account.
For now you have to do that via the official app. You could attempt to register directly with raw APIs using https://git.opengrind.org/open-grind/grindr-api-dev-tool too, but it requires a reCAPTCHA enterprise token, which you have to mint somehow.
it looks great! much better than the official app- one note though, for some reason trans isn’t showing up in the tribes list
Yes, it’s a regression in recent version, tracked in https://git.opengrind.org/open-grind/open-grind/issues/372. Will be fixed in the follow-up update this week.
I have to wonder if I put the Linux version of the app in KDE mobile session on my Linux server, headless, and stream that to my phone, I won’t have to wait for this project to come to the App Store.
You might as well just clone the source code and build an ipa ;)
Really I’m surprised decentralized, ad-free, non-surveillance gay dating apps aren’t a thing. A federated dating app could be amazing.
we have the majority of users struggling to register in Matrix to join the discussion chat. how many technically-skilled open gays (and queers) ready to publicly broadcast their sexual orientation & gender and the fact they’re dating as well as their full dating profile by self-hosting some decentralized dating server do you think on average are in each city in the world? maybe a handful in the most developed countries. I doubt there’ll be even a dozen in my city (Madrid) though
I wish the straights were as dedicated as our homosexual bros.
Most problems with straight dating apps is too many guys and too little girls. So if someone is dedicated enough to make something like, they don’t have the reach to get to girls to sign up. Unless they are marketing minded, then they just wanna make money with their “idea”
Also, this may be wrong, but I expect far more men to be searching for an open source alternative than women. Not only is it harder to attract more women to the apps in general, and open source one is already targeting a market that I think is even more male dominated.
There are girls on grindr, both trans and cis. But… Are you really saying you expect there to be less dudes… on grindr?? It was originally just dudes - the literal opposite of less dudes lmao
Noice
gayest and proudest 💅
i haven’t used grindr since 2012 – thanks for giving me an excuse to give it a try again. lol
The dudes are always hot and ready.
yes and not for me. lol
i’ve never had much success using apps – only in bottom buffets like horsemarketsf work for me :p
And occasionally bathed and sober!
Something about MIT licensed Grindr client tickles me lol. Great job!
I assume Google (on Grindr’s instructions) will take it down eventually, but I guess you’re prepared for that by trying to put it on F-Droid
KDE gonna start shipping with Krindr
And then expand to a Feeld client called “Kinky”
…I’ll see myself out
The recommended link to download is still https://opengrind.org/guides/download as well as Forgejo https://git.opengrind.org/open-grind/open-grind/releases
F-Droid is a backup for people who don’t want to egress to Open Grind infra (even though the promise not to log, analyze any IPs is legally binded by the Privacy Policy, but I understand them) or those who want to be sure every new release is reproducible (if they don’t trust Open Grind CI that verifies this automatically before each release).
Google Play is temporal listing that will get taken down soon, but it does add credibility.
i have actually been using this for a while now, found it on my own when i discovered grindr and grapheneos dont play nice, its been very cool so far, no complaints
Nice to hear that it works on GrapheneOS. If you do encounter any issues, please report them anywhere you want — Forgejo issues, Matrix chat, or even personally to me so I can relay them properly. I can’t test on GrapheneOS because don’t have a compatible device, but I assume many Open Grind users are running it on GrapheneOS.
did you figure out the problem between grindr and graphene?
Just tried it out.
Works great so far.
Appreciate the not gatekeeping on the tags and people showing up like the official app does.
awesome work.
tysm <3
Does something like this for heterosexual people exist? Like an open-source Tinder like app?
Guess I have to update my orientation to preserve my commitment to FOSS options.
This is the Gay Agenda the bible bashers have been warning me about…
Not that I know of. Tinder is pretty hard to reverse-engineer, Meta-levels of bot automation detection (where bot automation means anything that doesn’t go through their official client in a way they intended)
It would be nice if there was an integrated dating platform, so bi people could easily be in both major dating pools.
Maybe check Alovoa
It kind of sucks. At least in my area. I only get spam.
Send a link to Mike Johnson.
the lawyer?oh ok i got it 💀
I assume anyone else can also use the app. You don’t have to be gay to use a gay app.
lgTB+
Honey, it’s a gay hookup app. If you are a man looking for sex with a woman you are going to be disappointed.
Everyone needs love. I’m taken but I would be happy to be in a shared space. But I also understand the need for exclusivity.
-Republican Senators
Oh shit! Am I a senator for thinking about it? Or a candidate?
What am I going to say to my constituents?
What am I going to say to my constituents?
You don’t have to be gay to use a gay app.
That probably works.
This makes sense. I’ll have to come clean… What??? What happened?? I’m not a politician anymore!
