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.

  • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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    4 hours ago

    Really I’m surprised decentralized, ad-free, non-surveillance gay dating apps aren’t a thing. A federated dating app could be amazing.

    • Viktor Shchelochkov@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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      4 hours ago

      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

    • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Most problems with straight dating apps is too many guys and very small amount of 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”

  • altphoto@lemmy.today
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    21 hours ago

    I assume anyone else can also use the app. You don’t have to be gay to use a gay app.

  • dorkage@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Just tried it out.

    Works great so far.

    Appreciate the not gatekeeping on the tags and people showing up like the official app does.

  • bugbear@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 day ago

    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

  • erotador@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    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

    • Viktor Shchelochkov@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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      1 day ago

      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.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    How much work do you think would it be to also create a FOSS backend, maybe utilizing an existing xmpp server for federation?

    • Viktor Shchelochkov@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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      1 day ago

      Someone in the community already works on it. I personally don’t see a point in it — Grindr sucks in every way, all other apps are better experience-wise. Grindr is gay culture, mentioned in songs, memes, essentially every gay man in the world who has internet knows what Grindr is. 100 M profiles dating pool. It’s not realistic even for competitors to reach a fraction of this, let alone a federated social. And if you do know what federation, decentralization and XMPP are — why would you use a hookup app anyway instead of utilizing existing federation apps and social networks to find someone you like? ;)