PhoneDeck

Turn your iPhone into a free Mac controller

iOS

Mac

Productivity

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the 'no setup headaches' bit is the hard part — iphone↔mac local control usually dies on the ios local-network prompt + bonjour discovery when the phone's on wifi and the mac's on ethernet. that cross-interface case is where these quietly break.

Reusing the phone I already own instead of buying a StreamDeck is the right insight, and shipping it free in 7 days because you needed it yourself is the kind of small utility I like. Before I map custom buttons to shortcuts, the thing I'd want to know is how the phone actually talks to the Mac: is it a direct local connection over the LAN (or USB), or does it route through a cloud relay? For a controller I'd much rather it stay on-device with nothing leaving my network.

Took it for a quick spin and the media controls showed up on my phone almost instantly, no fiddling with settings. Nice that it's free too.

Love this idea, turning a phone you already own into a free StreamDeck is such a clever way to solve a problem without selling people more hardware.

Oh wow, I stepped into a completely different universe! I'm a huge fan of Apple products and the seamless connection between Mac, iPhone and iPad - but I can't quite figure out the benefit of controlling your Mac from your iPhone. Maybe because I'm a designer, not a developer?

That's clever. Do you plan to support app-specific button profiles, or is it always global?

Used it for a few minutes and the media controls on my iPhone for my Mac just work instantly, no fiddling. Nice touch that it's free with no account needed.

@vanshmparihar Kudos !! Works like a charm, even on a iPad. Saves money on a Elgato. I agree with some of the comments, you need to charge it as this an app in need.
Requests - Scale to ipad ratio, Have 3 default configs - AI - Design - Music etc. free on iphone but Charge for custom setups, like 3x4 grids or iphone etc.

Compared to Bezel which is about mirroring your iPhone onto your Mac, PhoneDeck sounds like it's going the other direction, using the phone as the input device rather than the display. Cool that both approaches exist for people who want different things out of that phone Mac link.

This is real prob, wanting a StreamDeck but not wanting to drop the money on hardware. Using a device people already own instead of adding more gear is the right instinct.

The obvious trade off vs a dedicated StreamDeck is that your phone's now tied up as a controller instead of free for other stuff, and you need somewhere to prop it. Not a dealbreaker but worth weighing against the "free" part.

Downloading this now to test with OBS during my next stream setup. Will report back on whether the media controls actually replace my physical deck or just handle the basics.

"No setup headaches" is the part that will make this or break this for me. Every Mac controller app I've tried needs some combo of permissions or network config that breaks the first time your router restarts. If it actually just works out the box that's worth the download by itself.

Dune's already doing context aware Mac automation and Keyboard Maestro's the heavy weight for scripting workflows. What's PhoneDeck's actual lane here. Is it meant to be the simpler, more casual layer on top or a real alternative to those?

Genuinely curious how you're keeping this free long term. Solo dev, no subscription... is the plan to monetize some other way later, or is this just a passion project you're fine running at a loss on?

How does the connection actually work, WiFi only or Bluetooth too? Latency matters a lot for media controls or trigger buttons during a screen share.