Free Grind

Free Grind is a open-source, cross-platform, third party Grindr Client, That is free, ad-free, tracker-free and community-driven, it runs the same codebase on macOS, Windows, Linux, Android and iOS.

It is not a addon, patch or mod of the official app. It is a fully custom client that talks directly to Grindr’s API itself. This made it quite involved.

Why I built it

I built it since I hated how much limitations and ads grindr threw at me and everyone else. This app managed to bypass most of the restrictions that were put in place.

Free Grind did not collect any data, show any ads or make any money (excl donations).

How it is built

The whole thing is built using Tauri. The UI was made using React and Tailwind and the Network is handled in Rust. The reason for this being all on codebase is it allowed for easy maintainability.

We also had a few extra pieces that helped:

• i18next this was used so the interface could be translated by the community.
• MapLibre was used for the location pickers
• WebSockets were used for real-time messaging and events

It took ages to get the API to fully allow the app since this involved making sure the exact TLS fingerprint matches.

The biggest challenge there was documenting the API of how the real client worked, working out the shape of requests and responses and also authentication.

What it does

By now it covers most of what a user would use day to day

• A grid with filtering, and detail views for each profile.
• A full inbox with real-time chat: text, images, video, audio messages, albums, reactions and Gaymoji.
• Video calls.
• Album management: create, upload, reorder, share.
• Editing your own profile and managing your photos.
• A manual location picker, and device location on mobile.
• Push notifications.

Status and honesty

Free Grind is currently no longer updated as I recently at the time of writing this got a boyfriend and have very little interested working on this app any further. The app should still work for some time but it was recently forked by https://github.com/fdev8974/free-grind which seems to be maintaining it as well.

This app does break Grindr’s terms of service, and no one that has worked on this app is affiliated with Grindr LLC. There has been no confirmed bans for using it but the risk is not zero. Use at your own discretion.

Getting involved

It is open to all kinds of contributions: code, documentation, bug reports and reverse engineering.

• Original Source: github.com/imaoreo/free-grind
• Forked Source: github.com/fdev8974/free-grind