GRIND CITY OS
The User Manual
Everything on www.grindcity.org, explained — the desktop, the widgets, the GCM26 archive, Mane Street, Photo School, your account, and the Admin panel. Every section heading carries a QR code that jumps a phone straight to it.
Grind City OS is the home of Grind City Meet — Memphis's photographer community, celebrating ten years of exploring the city. Instead of a normal website, the whole thing is a macOS-style desktop that runs in your browser: a menu bar, windows you can drag around, a dock, widgets, a chat room, and apps.
The first time you visit www.grindcity.org you'll see a short boot screen (the crowned-G logo with a progress bar), then the desktop fades in over the "Bluff City Dusk" wallpaper — a Mississippi River sunset under the M-shaped Hernando de Soto bridge. Everything you can see can be clicked, opened, dragged, or rearranged.
- Open an app — click its icon in the dock (bottom), or double-click a desktop icon (top-right). On a phone, a single tap opens things.
- Move a window — drag its title bar. Resize — drag any edge or corner.
- Close / minimize / zoom — the red, yellow, and green traffic lights in the window's top-left corner.
- Search everything — press ⌘ Space (or click the magnifier in the menu bar) for Spotlight.
- Sign in — the red Sign In pill at the right of the menu bar.
- Change the look — Control Center (the sliders icon) for Dark Mode and brightness, or Settings for wallpapers.
The strip across the top works like the real thing, left to right:
- ⌀ Aperture menu (far left) — About Grind City OS, Settings, Sign In / Sign Out, and the power controls: Sleep (click or press any key to wake), Restart, and Shut Down (with a power button to boot back up).
- App name — bold, shows whichever window is focused ("Finder" when none).
- File / View / Window / Help — real menus: close windows, switch Light/Dark, change wallpaper, minimize/zoom, bring all windows to front, open the Read Me or this manual.
- Sign In pill / account chip — signed out you get the red Sign In button; signed in it becomes a circle with your initial. Click it for your name and role, Open Admin (staff), Manage sign-in, and Sign Out.
- Wi-Fi & battery — decorative, like a good desk plant.
- Control Center — Wi-Fi and Dark Mode toggles plus a brightness slider that really dims the screen.
- Spotlight — the magnifier; same as ⌘ Space.
- Clock — always Memphis time (America/Chicago).
- Drag a window by its title bar; it can't be pushed above the menu bar.
- Resize from all four edges and corners (look for the cursor change).
- 🔴 Close removes the window. 🟡 Minimize shrinks it into its dock icon — click that dock icon to bring it back. 🟢 Zoom (or double-clicking the title bar) toggles near-fullscreen.
- The focused window is brighter; clicking anywhere on a window brings it to the front.
- Some windows have an ↗ at the right of the title bar (like GCM26) — that opens the same content in a normal browser tab.
The dock floats at the bottom: Finder (Past Events), Mane Street (the trolley), GCM26 (the aperture), Settings, then Admin (staff only) and the Trash. Hover to see the magnification effect and name tooltips; a small dot under an icon means that app is open; launching an app makes its icon bounce. On phones the dock scrolls sideways.
Down the right edge of the desktop:
- Past Events — a folder that opens a Finder window of the archive (GCM26 and the Instagram walk archive).
- GCM26 — the 2026 anniversary walk, opens in a window. Right-click it for "Open in New Tab".
- Gallery and Photo Drop — the community photo wall and the submission box (see section 12).
- Memes — a folder pre-loaded with the internet's top 100 meme templates, streamed live from imgflip. Click one to view it big; right-click to save a copy.
- Read Me — a quick orientation document. User Manual — this guide.
- Instagram and Linktree — the ↗ badge means they open in a new browser tab.
Single-click selects (blue label), double-click opens; on touch screens one tap opens directly. Right-click the empty desktop to change the wallpaper.
The stack pinned top-left is live, keyless, and tuned to downtown Memphis (the Exchange Building, where the walks start):
- Weather — current temperature in °F with an animated condition icon, plus a three-day forecast. Data refreshes every 30 minutes from Open-Meteo and the last reading is cached on your device so it paints instantly.
- Air Quality — the US-AQI arc meter with a needle across the six EPA bands (Good → Hazardous) and the current PM2.5 reading.
- Gauges — two rings: humidity right now, and the chance of precipitation today.
On short screens the lower cards bow out first; on phones you keep weather, calendar, and reminders.
The calendar shows the current month with today ringed in red. Days with a gold dot are Grind City Meet events — click them: they open the event's registration page. The footer always shows the next upcoming class.
The Reminders card ("Photo School") lists all four sessions of the photography series: past classes are checked off and struck through, upcoming ones sit with open circles. Every row links to the library's registration page.
GCM26 was the 10-year anniversary photo walk — Sunday, May 3, 2026, a ~0.8-mile loop through downtown: the Exchange Building → Stereo Alley → the Sterick lobby → First Horizon → sunset on the Rendezvous garage roof → back to the Exchange for the after-party. The entire live event site is preserved exactly as it ran at www.grindcity.org/gcm26: the interactive route map, all five stops with photo tips, the timeline, and the after-party details.
Open it from the GCM26 desktop icon, the dock, or the Past Events folder — it runs inside a window (drag it around while you browse the map), or hit the title-bar ↗ for a full tab. Tap any stop card for its photo tip and map links.
The trolley in the dock opens #mane-street — but first, the room dials in: a full 56k modem handshake plays over a Grind City Online sign-on screen (dial tone, the digits, the screech, the static — all of it, about 28 glorious seconds). Impatient? The Skip the handshake ⏭ button connects instantly.
Once you're in: pick a handle (2–18 letters/numbers) and pull up. The room is live and ephemeral: messages are broadcast to whoever is in the room at that moment and never stored — when everyone leaves, the room forgets. You'll see "pulled up" and "rolled out" lines as folks come and go, and the header counts who's here. There's a gentle rate limit (one thought at a time). Be cool.
Grind City Meet — 4-Week Photography Series at the Cossitt Library: the essentials and fundamentals of photography, from camera basics to editing. Second Thursdays, 6–7:30 PM, free (registration recommended):
- June 11, 2026 — Intro to Film Workshop ✓
- July 9, 2026 — Editing Basics ✓
- August 13, 2026 — topic TBA
- September 10, 2026 — topic TBA
Register on the library calendar, or just click the gold-dotted date on the desktop calendar widget.
The Gallery(in the dock and on the desktop) is the community photo wall — everyone's approved shots in one grid, each with the photographer's credit. Click any photo for the full view with its caption and credit; Instagram handles link out.
To get your work on the wall, open Photo Drop(desktop icon, or the "+ Submit yours" button inside the Gallery):
- Drop your pictures onto the dashed zone — or click it to choose files. Up to 5 at a time, JPG/PNG/WebP/GIF; big files are slimmed automatically before upload.
- Caption each shot (optional) and enter your name (required — it becomes the printed credit) plus your @instagram if you want it linked.
- Submit. Your pictures land in the review queue; a moderator approves what goes public. Staff uploads publish instantly.
Moderators curate everything from Admin → Gallery: approve or reject the queue, edit captions and credits inline, unpublish, or delete — so the wall stays sharp.
- Click the red Sign In pill in the menu bar (or go straight to /login-link-passkey).
- Enter your email and hit Email me a link.
- Check your inbox for the black-and-gold email from mane@grindcity.org (peek in spam the first time) and tap Sign in to Grind City OS. Links work once and expire in 15 minutes.
- You land back on the site signed in — the menu bar now shows your initial in a red circle.
The same page is your account panel when signed in: your name, email, role, passkey management, and Sign Out. No passwords exist anywhere in this system — just email links and passkeys.
A passkey lets your device's Face ID / Touch ID / PIN sign you in with one tap — no email round-trip. After your first sign-in, on the account page click + Add a passkey on this device and approve the browser prompt. From then on, "Sign in with a passkey" on the sign-in screen is instant. You can register one per device (phone, laptop) and remove any of them from the same page with the ✕.
Staff (moderators and up) get an extra gold-shield Admin icon in the dock and in the account-chip menu. It opens a window with these tabs:
- Users — every member with their avatar, name (click to edit inline), email, passkey count, and last-in date.
- Open a profile — click anyone's avatar or email for a full profile drawer: last login, login count, last seen, last IP, join date, passkeys, and their recent activity.
- Invite by email — type an email, pick a starting role, hit Invite; they get a branded invite good for 7 days.
- Shareable invite link — pick a role and hit Create link; it copies a `/join/…` URL you can text to anyone. They open it, enter their email, and get a one-tap sign-in link (then add a passkey). One link can onboard many people; links show usage and can be revoked.
- Change a role / Suspend (1/7/30d) / Delete — per-row controls; guard rails apply (see the next section).
- Roles & Permissions — the live permission matrix: 11 granular permissions × 4 roles as checkboxes, each with a plain-English label. Super Admins toggle any cell; changes apply within a minute.
- Gallery — the photo-curation queue: approve/reject submissions, edit captions and credits inline, unpublish or delete published shots (see section 12).
- Audit Log (Super Admins only) — every action and login event across the whole site, newest first: who did what, to whom, when, and from which IP. Filter by action type. Login/logout, invites, role changes, suspensions, deletions, permission edits, passkey changes, and gallery moderation are all recorded.
- How To — this manual, embedded, with the PDF download.
Four roles, from least to most access:
- Member — a regular account. Chat, browse, manage their own passkeys.
- Moderator — can open Admin, see the user list, and moderate chat.
- Admin — everything above plus invite users, edit names, change member/moderator roles, and suspend.
- Super Admin — everything, always (the matrix row is locked on). Only Super Admins can grant or revoke Admin, delete users, or edit the permission matrix.
The eight permissions: admin.access, users.view, users.invite, users.edit, users.roles, users.delete, perms.edit, chat.moderate. Built-in safety: nobody can change their own role, suspend themselves, or delete themselves; only a Super Admin can touch another admin; and the founding Super Admin can never be demoted or deleted.
- ⌘ Space — Spotlight. Type a few letters, arrow keys + Enter to launch.
- Esc — closes menus, Spotlight, and Control Center.
- Double-click a title bar to zoom a window.
- Right-click the desktop → change wallpaper; right-click GCM26 → open in a new tab.
- Aperture menu → Sleep for the world's most dramatic screensaver; any key wakes it.
- On phones: one tap opens icons, windows open near-fullscreen, the dock scrolls sideways, and the widget stack keeps weather + calendar + reminders.
- Your theme, wallpaper, brightness, and chat handle are remembered per device.
Scan any card to open it on your phone — or just click.
