Picture, mouse, keyboard and clipboard come with the app. Nothing extra to install, no service to sign up for.
The computer's hardware encoder (VideoToolbox) puts out 30 frames a second. When the link narrows the bit rate comes down with it, so the picture softens for a beat and then sharpens again. Between keyframes the link carries only what changed, so reading a document costs almost no bandwidth. A sharp 1920-pixel-wide picture needs around 8 Mbps.
The computer at home registers with the meeting point over HTTPS and waits there. On the same network the two machines connect directly. Further apart, they go through port 443 and the traffic looks like HTTPS. You never have to pick the route.
The 6-digit code never crosses the wire. Both ends prove they know it with an HMAC over a fresh random challenge. Session keys are derived from that, mixed with an X25519 ECDH secret the server holds no part of. Video and input then travel wrapped in authenticated ChaChaPoly.
A machine signs with Ed25519 to claim its ID, so nobody can pose as your computer. The ID is issued once and stays with that machine for good. The last digit is a checksum, so a typo is caught on the spot, before anything is sent anywhere.
Full gestures, and the pointer lands exactly where you touched. A row of macOS shortcuts sits on the on-screen keyboard, so you don't have to hunt for them mid-session.
Load the remote page in Chrome, Edge or Safari 16.4 and later, type the ID and the code, and the screen is there. The browser decodes the H.264 with its own WebCodecs and the encryption is untouched. Close the tab and the session is over, with nothing left on the borrowed machine.
macOS merges every active display into a single frame: two 3440×1440 screens become 6880×1440. The panel can lower the resolution or mirror the second screen into the first, which is what genuinely cuts the data. Or pick one running app and send only its window.
Copy here, paste there. The text rides inside the same encrypted stream, with no extra port and no extra service.
A dropped signal, a Wi-Fi switch, a phone that locked and woke again: the session rebuilds itself. You only see an error when the picture is truly stuck.
Same protocol, same H.264 stream. The person at a computer has a real keyboard and room for several windows. The person holding an iPhone has ten fingers on a small sheet of glass. So each build carries things the others don't.
One install covers both roles. The computer you leave at home runs Client, the one you carry runs Remote. Two buttons at the bottom of the panel swap them whenever you like.
No main window. No Dock icon unless you want one. No background updater. Start it once on the host at home and leave it there. It can launch itself every time you log in.
A sleeping computer drops its connection. Wake-on-LAN can't cross your ISP's router. So the computer at home schedules its own wake-ups in hardware, spends a moment checking whether anyone is calling, then sleeps again. During a session it keeps itself awake.
Each machine gets its own window, side by side on the same screen. Closing a window really does end the session: the app disconnects first and closes second, so nothing is left dangling.
Set a global hotkey and the panel appears from anywhere. It deliberately uses an old Carbon API so it never has to ask for Accessibility. A computer in Remote mode needs that permission for nothing else, and asking for something that heavy just to open a panel is worth being suspicious of.
On the same network a single magic packet wakes it straight away, with no waiting for the schedule. The wake button only appears when that packet can genuinely arrive. It never guesses “probably asleep” and hides a real error underneath.
macOS merges every active display into one frame. Two 3440×1440 screens become 6880×1440, and all of it goes over the wire. The panel can lower the resolution or mirror the second screen into the first, the only thing that genuinely cuts how much has to travel.
A 1920-pixel computer screen squeezed into 390 points of iPhone width. One fingertip covers about five pixels over there. Nearly everything in this build comes from that one number.
The pointer is drawn on the device in your hand. It doesn't wait for a frame to come back from the computer. Over a long link the picture is always a few hundred milliseconds late. Let the pointer lag with it and every swipe looks like it's chasing your finger, and that sluggishness attaches itself to everything you do.
An iPad with a Magic Keyboard is the most serious way to use this. Every physical key goes straight to the computer, including combinations with ⌘ ⌥ ⌃ ⇧. No more typing on an on-screen keyboard that eats half the display.
A title bar is 28 pixels tall, about 5 points on an iPhone screen. A resize edge is thinner than the error in your fingertip. So there's a proper panel for moving a window, resizing it, and snapping it to a half or a corner.
Finger speed is measured by the touch's own clock rather than the display refresh. Tie it to the refresh and the same swipe gives different results on a 60 Hz screen and a 120 Hz one. There's also a precision mode that slows the pointer right down for grabbing a divider or a title bar.
The combinations you actually use sit in a strip on screen: ⌘Q, ⌘Tab, screenshot, lock. You choose which ones appear. A few that macOS ignores when synthesised are wired to the real function instead, measured and handled one by one.
The list of apps open on the host sits in the toolbar. Switch to one, quit it, or stream only its window. A small screen reads better with one app on it than with a whole desktop, and the connection gets lighter too.
This is a full client of the same protocol, with the same handshake and the same encryption. The computer at the other end can't tell whether it's talking to the app or to a Safari tab.
Nothing to download, nothing to install, nobody to sign in as. On a borrowed machine the only thing you need is the browser already sitting on it.
The H.264 stream goes into WebCodecs and is painted straight onto a canvas, the same path the browser uses for video. No plugin or extension is involved. The computer has to be encoding in H.264; if you switched it to HEVC the page says so plainly instead of leaving you in front of a black rectangle.
⌘W, ⌘Q, ⌘T and ⌘N belong to the browser before they belong to you. Chrome hands most of them back in full screen. Safari has no such API, so those combinations live on a key strip on the page. Everything else types as it would on a real keyboard.
Copy on the machine you're sitting at, press one button, and the text lands in the computer's clipboard. A browser only grants clipboard access on a deliberate action, so this is a button, with no silent background sync.
The computer app builds a ready-made link with the ID in it, to send on to whoever needs it. The 6-digit code is never in there, so anyone who finds the link is still standing outside the door. On the first connection the browser pins the computer's key, and from then on a swapped key is refused.
A browser can't open the kind of direct connection the app can, so there's no LAN shortcut here. Every session goes the long way and counts against the free time allowance. In the same house as the computer, the app is faster and runs no clock.
Some machines you can't install anything on, like the shared computer at the office. Open Chrome or Safari, go to the remote page, type the 9-digit ID and then the 6-digit code. Your computer's screen appears right there in the tab.
The page asks for the 9-digit ID, then the 6-digit code. The code is always typed by hand and never travels inside a link.
Windows, Linux, or an unfamiliar computer all work. The only requirement is a reasonably recent browser.
Same handshake, same session keys, same ChaChaPoly as the app. The 6-digit code never crosses the wire, and the meeting point still can't read a thing.
You never create one, so there's nothing to sign out of and nothing to uninstall. The machine you borrowed keeps no trace of you.
A browser can't open a direct connection, so the browser build always goes via the meeting point and every session counts against the free time allowance. It needs a browser with WebCodecs (Chrome, Edge, or Safari 16.4 and later) and a computer encoding in H.264.
Install the app on the host at home and give it a role. At the other end, type the two numbers, from the app or from a browser. Nothing to disclose about yourself.
