Can You Download Grindr On Computer

[Catherine Rubeo]

Grindris infamously a mobile-app. While it wasn't novel in the sense that it was GPS-based, the convenience of having it on your phone and being able to log on to browse wherever you are is what made the service an instant hit. As it was on its rise, we've been told that there was an offer to sell to Adam4Adam, a desktop-based service that was a precursor to the app. A4A said no and well ... we see how that turned out for them!

Well, now Grindr is throwing it back, finally introducing a desktop iteration. As the company does, the new functionality was introduced pretty discretely. So discretely in fact, that we aren't sure when it launched but at least it's here, to help with all those hours you're spending at home.

To use the desktop version, users must log on in-app, as well as go to web.grindr.com. When you click your own profile to edit your headline or other attributes, there's now a new button that says "Grindr Web." Clicking it will allow you to take a photo of the QR Code on the web.grindr.com page which automatically logs you in. There doesn't seem to be an iteration of the desktop version for those who don't already have an account on mobile.

It's pretty barebones right now but that's all you really need. Messages are shared across both platforms so you don't need to worry about forgetting where you left off in the conversation when you finally get up to run to the store. One nifty tool is that by default the site runs on "office mode" meaning that you have to mouse over photos to see them -- in case there's anyone over your shoulder. You can toggle out of this version.

Mikelle is the former editorial director of digital for PrideMedia, guiding digital editorial and social across Out, The Advocate, Pride.com, Out Traveler, and Plus.After starting as a freelancer for Out in 2013, he joined the staff as Senior Editor working across print and digital in 2018. In early 2021 he became Out's digital director, marking a pivot to content that centered queer and trans stories and figures, exclusively. In September 2021, he was promoted to editorial director of PrideMedia.He has written cover stories on Ricky Martin, Miss Fame, Nyle DiMarco, Jeremy O. Harris, Law Roach, and Symone.

Compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems, Nox Player has an easy enough interface to navigate on your laptop. A benefit of Nox Player is that you can change the hardware settings so that it runs faster, though a downside of the app is that its default Android system is Android 4.4 or 5.0.

A downside to using BlueStacks is the amount of memory you have to have to run it properly. Your computer needs to have at least 4 GB of RAM for the app to run properly, but BlueStacks recommends having at least 8 GB of RAM for faster, smoother performance.

To access Grindr on your PC or desktop, look for screen mirroring applications that are compatible with your phone and will work on your laptop. For example, iOS has its own application called AirPlay, though other apps such as ApowerMirror, LetsView, AnyDesk, or TeamViewer are good alternatives, too.

Grindr was among the first location-based apps for gay men. Over the years, in its long-running mobile format, Grindr has gained global prominence and pivoted to include a larger swath of bisexual, transgender and queer users.

Grindr users create profiles with photos, akin to Bumble or Santa Monica-based Tinder, and, using GPS, find people nearby to chat or meet up with. Grindr Web is designed to allow for easier profile browsing and to be attractive to users ages 30 to 50, individuals who may have begun using social platforms on a computer rather than a phone.

Grindr said in its first-quarter financial report, which was released earlier this month, that it has more than 13 million monthly active users. It reported about 11 million monthly active users for 2021, and 12 million in 2022, showing moderate but consistent growth.

What you can do if you want to look into this yourself is: root your Android phone, lookin your /data/data folder for Grindr's app data, copy it out to your PC and go thru it yourself.The file command on a macOS or Linux terminal can tell what type of file something isregardless of its extension (in this post, many JPEG photos were named with ".1" file extensionsinstead of .jpeg and Linux easily ferreted this out).Also note that rooting your Android phone may require a factory reset of the phone, soif it's your existing Grindr cache you want to get into, you may be out of luck. Google Pixelphones for example officially support unlocking the bootloader (necessary for flashing customROMs and root), but this action forces a factory reset for privacy (e.g. a thief stole yourphone and wants to root it, which would let them bypass your lock screen, Google wants the phoneto mandatorily reset to factory defaults before it can be rooted). Some phones with shadier rootexploits may not need the factory reset. You're on your own either way. Don't ask me for supportin rooting your phone or helping you hack Grindr.A long time ago, the Grindr for Android app used to store its photo cache on your SD card, but lately they hid them away in the app's private space to make them slightly more difficult to get to. I decided to go exploring using Root Browser and see what I could find out.When I say "photo cache" I mean the place where Grindr downloads pictures locally so that it doesn't need to keep redownloading everyone's pictures all the time and consuming a lot of unnecessary bandwidth. Grindr caches both profile pictures and pictures received over chat messages. They both go into the same place. So if you have access to that place, you can get high resolution copies of all pictures received over chat and have them on your PC. :)First of all, you'll need a rooted Android device for this, because the Android OS normally doesn't allow apps to get into each other's private data folders. The Root Browser app is a file browser that's root-aware (so it will prompt for root permission when you attempt to open a folder that ordinarily you can't open without root).So, without further ado, Grindr's photo cache is located at /data/data/com.grindrapp.android/cache/picasso-cache/. This folder may contain a lot of files, mine had 3,458 and so Root Browser took a while to load that folder. You can copy it somewhere under /mnt/sdcard and then get to your files from a PC that way. Make sure the files are no longer owned by "root" when put in the SD card part, or you may run into issues when accessing them from your PC.Most of the files in this folder have hexadecimal names that appear to be hashes of some sort, and the names usually come in pairs, one with a ".0" file extension and the other with a ".1", for example one I found on my phone was 4e21d675447678d0493bc8cb41a56e8d.0.The ".0" file is a plain text file, and most of the ".1" files are the JPEG images. I use Linux, and my file browser automatically identified the types of all the files and showed thumbnail images for all the ".1" files. So, most of the time if you rename one of the ".1" files to have a ".jpg" extension you can see the images under Windows.Some of the .1 files aren't images though. Some are more text files, and I peeked inside one to see what it was:$ cat c1749deee81d4fece16d836e177c5852.1

["messageId":16970,"title":"Calling All DJs & Bartenders","body":"Are you one of the sexiest DJs or bartenders and able to work a paid event on the afternoon of April 27th in Palm Springs? If so, send us your information and a link to your website to palms...@grindr.com or simply tap 'More' to email us directly. ","actionTitle":"More", "dismissTitle":null, "expirationDate":1396853940000, "url":"mailto:palms...@grindr.com"]These appear to be the broadcasted pop-up messages shown in the app sometimes.Now, the other interesting files are the ones with the ".0" extensions. These appear to be debug information, and they're basically the full HTTP request dump used to download the ".1" file. Here's what the one looked like for my profile picture (in case the Grindr CDN link stops working and you're curious, it's this picture):$ cat 4e21d675447678d0493bc8cb41a56e8d.0 :80/images/profile/1024x1024/d8dfd4eb2abd9c4d29653587cc87912b393bac97GET0HTTP/1.1 200 OK14Accept-Ranges: bytesContent-Length: 72057Content-Type: image/jpgDate: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 20:09:05 GMTEtag: "98af07f8697f854734874296a90c640f"Last-Modified: Sat, 01 Mar 2014 22:05:22 GMTServer: ECS (lax/2851)x-amz-id-2: [REDACTED]x-amz-request-id: [REDACTED]X-Android-Received-Millis: 1396642144430X-Android-Response-Source: CONDITIONAL_CACHE 200X-Android-Selected-Transport: http/1.1X-Android-Sent-Millis: 1396642144347X-Cache: HITI edited-out the "x-amz" headers because I'm not sure how secret those are supposed to be.When browsing through my cache folder I also saw some pictures that weren't profile pics, but were sent over chat messages. These always seem to be the full resolution of the original pic sent, i.e. not thumbnails or anything. The ".0" file looks the same as for a profile picture, except the URL downloaded begins with " :80/grindr/chat/" and the server headers respond with a "Content-Type: binary/octet-stream" (which causes a web browser to download the picture to disk instead of displaying it in the browser).Some of the ".1" files are actually empty (0 bytes), and their .0 files indicate that these are the ad banners (requesting a URL from googleads.g.doubleclick.net). So it looks like whatever system in Grindr is responsible for downloading pictures also sorta deals with downloading ad banners, except it doesn't actually save the banner into the cache folder.The last somewhat not-very-interesting file in the cache folder is called "journal", and it's a text file. By reading the first couple lines, it appears to be part of libcore.io.DiskLruCache, a bit of Java code that provides a rotating offline cache. This probably means that, if Grindr's cache folder fills up, it will automatically remove old files to make room for new ones, so it can keep its overall disk usage under control automatically. The journal file appears to list the hash names of all the other files in the folder, along with words like "CLEAN", "DIRTY", and "REMOVE". Tags: Curiosity Gay Android Comments There are 26 comments on this page.Add yours.

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