The iPhone and iPad app
The iOS app is not a companion, a viewer or a cut-down remote. It attaches to the same host-owned sessions your Mac does, with the same input.
What you see on the phone is the terminal running on your Mac, right now.
What it does
Section titled “What it does”- Every workspace and every card on the host.
- Full terminal input — type, scroll, select, paste.
- Upload files from Files, the photo library or the camera.
- The command bar for keys a touch keyboard does not have.
- Voice input when typing is not practical.
- Notifications, with a tap straight into the session.
- Testing: tunnelled dev servers, mirrored Simulator, and installing an iOS build on the phone itself.
Getting started
Section titled “Getting started”Install the app, then scan the pairing QR code shown by the Mac app. See Pairing devices.
No account, no sign-up. The phone talks to your host directly — over the local network, Tailscale, or the relay, whichever is reachable. See How your devices reach your host.
Working on a small screen
Section titled “Working on a small screen”- Tap a card to bring it up large; the rest stay live behind it.
- The command bar sits above the keyboard and is configurable per tool.
- Sessions keep running when the app goes to the background, because they were never running in the app to begin with.
Details
Section titled “Details”- iOS 18 or newer.
- The app reconnects with exponential backoff, capped at 30 s in the foreground and 120 s in the background, and resets the backoff when the network path changes — so walking from cellular into Wi-Fi reconnects immediately instead of waiting out a timer.
- Live cards revive after a long background stretch by comparing connection epochs, so a frozen stream is detected rather than displayed.
- The Watch app talks to the host through the paired iPhone. See Apple Watch.