Stop the clocks, cut off the telephone, because you can now get Grindr on your desktop

An iPhone showing the Grindr logo

Grindr Web boldly goes where the hook-up app has never gone before – onto your desktop. Here’s how you can use it.

Over the last few years we’ve seen vinyl records, cassette tapes and radio enjoy a resurgence, Lindsay Lohan make a stunning musical comeback, and it now seems Grindr is the latest to join the retro revival, dragging us kicking and screaming away from our phones and back to good, old-fashioned internet dating.

With older sites like Fab Guys having kept desktop browser dating alive since the mid-noughties, Grindr Web is the hook-up app’s own website, designed for users who want to chat “quickly and discreetly” while at the office (what a concept!).

The future is now, reader.

https://twitter.com/Riccky_G/status/1244680543108644865

What is Grindr Web?

It’s a desktop version of that black and yellow app you love and/or hate so, so dearly, for users who prefer to chat on their computer, laptop or tablet.

The iteration was tested for pockets of users late last year before it was recently and rather discreetly launched to the public.

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Grindr Web offers users an array of ways to keep their use of the service discrete.

“It looks like a typical email interface so your business stays private, no matter who’s looking over your shoulder,” the website says.

The Grindr web interface has an "office mode", making the app more discrete by hiding faces and mimicking a non-specific communication platform. (Grindr)
The Grindr web interface has an “office mode”, making the app more discrete by hiding faces and mimicking a generic email interface. (Grindr)

The interface style has an “office mode” option which makes all profile pictures invisible.

You just have to hover your mouse over the profile to see the hidden pictures, whether on someone’s profile or in a chat with them.

Thankfully, the desktop version syncs automatically with the Grindr app, meaning that you won’t have to worry about forgetting where you left off with a user when you go back onto your mobile.

How do I use Grindr Web on my desktop?

To use the new function, users have to first log-onto their phones and open Grindr.

Users can access Grindr web under settings in the mobile app. (Grindr)
Users can access Grindr web under settings in the mobile app. (Grindr)

After clicking settings, users just have to tap the “Grindr Web” tab tucked under the option to edit their profiles.

After doing so, a screen to scan a QR code is dragged up.

That’s when you load web.grindr.com/login on your computer.

Each time you access the website, it loads-up a temporary QR code for users to scan.

Grindr web users must scan a unique QR code to log-into the desktop service. (Grindr)
Grindr web users must scan a unique QR code to log-into the desktop service. (Grindr)

Scan it and, like a not-at-all accurate representation of a black hoodie-wearing hacker in a bad noughties movie, you’re in.

At the time of writing, there’s no option to make an account from the desktop version. New users must make sign-up on the Grindr app on their mobile.

You can toggle the office mode on for when your boss is lurking over your shoulder or off, for when, to quote Grindr, you want to “see Grindr in all its glory”.

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