YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Any window from your Mac, on your iPhone and iPad

254 points chanana 1 day ago 75 comments

gumby 1 day ago | parent

Apple supports this already on the ipad by making the ipad another screen for your mac (I think it’s called sidecar?) and still use pencil, mouse, keyboard etc.

Iphone is novel though, but does a pencil work?

jasonjmcghee 1 day ago | parent

My guess is this is meant to be a no friction VNC (though it doesn't seem to be using VNC). So you can be away from home and remote in.

There are VNC clients on iphone / ipad - but generally it's whole desktop.

RealVNC is the name brand but it's not exactly a good experience. "Screens 5" looks like a better alternative.

isomorphic 1 day ago | parent

It's frustrating that Apple doesn't have their own Screen Sharing (VNC) application on the iPhone/iPad, if even just to provide a basic screen-sharing experience. They have something builtin to FaceTime (that I've never tried) as a kind of remote-support app.

RealVNC did not work from iOS/iPadOS to macOS Golden Gate when I tried it relatively recently, although it may have been updated since. It's possible Apple changed something in their version of VNC's auth.

I used to recommend Screens (v4) when it was flat licensed, as it seemed to work well and was well designed in dealing with smaller screens and input differences. Now (v5) it's $5/month $30/year $200/lifetime, which I can't really justify for my casual use case.

the_lucifer 22 hours ago | parent

> It's frustrating that Apple doesn't have their own Screen Sharing (VNC) application on the iPhone/iPad

At this point it almost feels intentional on Apple's part for not having a first party app, as if having one would be a tacit admission that iPads/iPhones are lesser than actual computers (although the logic does break down since they allow it on Macs).

IIRC they do support weird versions of screen sharing and remote control when on a Facetime call which is convoluted to say the least.

jscheel 1 day ago | parent

individual windows and touch are not supported by sidecar, afaik

GeekyBear 1 day ago | parent

Touch support was added this year.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102597

the_lucifer 22 hours ago | parent

Yep, it's part of the groundwork they're laying for the upcoming touchscreen Macs.

In the most recent beta, they added animations, and drag effects when reordering tabs in Safari: https://old.reddit.com/r/MacOSBeta/comments/1x656oc

jscheel 17 hours ago | parent

oh, awesome. I've put off updating my iPad because updates tend to screw with my music apps. Will have to check it out.

gumby 1 day ago | parent

I use touch and pen (useful for the zoom whiteboard) though I guess some gestures were not supported until 27 — guess I never used those ones!

thewhitetulip 1 day ago | parent

Also you need to be on the same apple id on every device for it to work

boguscoder 1 day ago | parent

And sidecar would not work over vpn

fbcpck 1 day ago | parent

Sidecar streams the mac display to the ipad, but it has to be initiated and controlled from the mac.

In contrast, what I wanted (what this app does!) is to view and control my mac from my handheld device, initiated from the handheld device.

These apps all look similar and it makes it very difficult to search:

• Mac screen --> Handheld, as extended display = Sidecar

Use-case: I use my ipad as additional window space for the mac.

• Mac screen --> Handheld, as duplicate display = Sill, Sunshine+Moonlight

Use-case: I leave my desktop and continue watching what I had playing on it from my kitchen ipad.

• Handheld screen --> Mac = Airplay

Use-case: I play some media from my iphone on the mac screen.

• iPhone screen --> Mac, controlled from Mac = iPhone Mirroring

Use-case: I use my iphone-only apps from my mac, wirelessly

• iPad controls --> Mac, controlled from Mac = Universal Controls

Use-case: I use my ipad with my mac mouse+keyboard

Usually, trying to search for this type of app obnoxiously returns results for Airplay, and if you manage to filter it out, it's Sidecar — but it's not what I want!

soifiosud 1 day ago | parent

Jump Desktop is also highly recommended. I see a lot of video editors use it.

I was surprised by how smooth it is.

alin23 1 day ago | parent

Brilliant! So much faster and seamless than VNC. Already helped me two times today.

This is the first time I discover an app through a Youtube video recommendation. I was watching The Rest Is Science when this 1 minute video appeared on the right side with 230k views about a macOS app?? It got me curious for sure.

Claude got really good at making demo videos with Hyperframes apparently. Just did my own this week for Cling (https://lowtechguys.com/cling) and Clop (https://lowtechguys.com/clop) and users are already appreciating that they can discover app features through easy to digest video snippets.

Most people don't read the website copy at all unfortunately so I had to adapt. But I would never have the patience to do that in After Effects.

bredren 1 day ago | parent

I wanted to look at your videos but they aren’t playing on my phone. Maybe it is noir? I would suggest embedding YouTube.

It has all the expected controls.

latexr 1 day ago | parent

Pretty sure you’re interacting with a spammer. Look at their posts, they all have this robotic ad-reading discourse and link back to one of their websites.

defrost 1 day ago | parent

Alternatively, they have had multiple past submissions on personal projects that have done well on HN, often (but not always) interact, and have English as a second or third language.

https://alinpanaitiu.com/

latexr 1 day ago | parent

That doesn’t justify promoting their own websites in almost every comment. I interact with many people who don’t have English as their first language and none of them sound like an ad. Bot or not, linking to yourself every time you interact is spammer behaviour.

alin23 1 day ago | parent

Is sharing now the new spamming? If I just say Cling people will have no idea what I mean. If I leave a link, people either will click and find something useful, or at least get some context on what I'm talking about or move along.

I get that we have to be skeptical nowadays with all the bots, but I would never have guessed that my day to day writing will be taken as robotic ad-reading.

latexr 1 day ago | parent

> Is sharing now the new spamming?

No, of course not, that is a pretty bad faith interpretation of what I wrote. Making every post about one’s own things is spammer behaviour, though, and explicitly against the rules.

> I would never have guessed that my day to day writing will be taken as robotic ad-reading.

It did to me, and I deal with spam frequently. If it had just been the writing style I wouldn’t have said anything, it was the links always there that triggered alarm bells.

alin23 1 day ago | parent

Got it. No worries. Have you ever had a friend at your place tell you in passing about a problem they recurrently have, and you have just the right tool to help them? And you can't help yourself and have to tell them about it?

That is my thinking on sharing these links to my work. I did something that helps me, and I want to see it helping others. Most of it is free.

There are no shop fronts for my work, no targeted ads, there are people that could benefit from it and me talking about it is one of the only ways to do that.

I myself found about Hyperframes from a comment like this, being in awe of what can be achieved with careful prompts and the right tooling. I struggled for years in DaVinci Resolve making stupidly high effort videos that looked amateurish and didn't convey the information I had in my head. I thought others might want to see that.

I get how seeing links in irrelevant comments can raise spam alarm bells, I thought I'm being useful and tried not to add links so often. But memory can be deceiving.

latexr 1 day ago | parent

Fair. I believe you that you’re trying to be helpful and apologise for saying I was “pretty sure” you were a spammer.

I just realised I have actually paid for one of your apps (Lunar). I haven’t used it in a few years since it messed up the config on a monitor that I connected to which wasn’t mine, but I understand you have to be hacky with the app due to its nature and I believe you care to make it good.

alin23 1 day ago | parent

Thanks for the Lunar purchase! Unfortunately the config messing up is done by the monitors themselves. All Lunar does is send standard DDC brightness, volume and contrast set commands, but some monitor firmwares change their presets and calibration completely when they get such a command. Impossible to know beforehand, DDC is a mess .

alin23 1 day ago | parent

There's a play pause button at the bottom right of the page. Its possible you have Reduce Motion or Low Power Mode enabled? That pauses videos by default.

Youtube comes with an iframe and privacy concerns when embedding, I need full control of the playback of my own HTML5 videos.

logicallee 1 day ago | parent

Cling and Clop look pretty cool, thanks for sharing these projects.

explosion-s 1 day ago | parent

This is so funny to me - I was also watching The Rest is Science when that popped up and I watched it, shoutout TRiS literally my favorite podcast ever. The app is really good though, my only qualm is that I can’t seem to get rid of all the controls and only view the window on my phone on portrait mode, nor do keyboard shortcuts seem to work (modifiers not applying)

alin23 1 day ago | parent

The nice thing about it being open source is you can point claude at it and fix them and run your own custom version. The bad part is you need to reinstall it every few days to keep it from expiring if you don't have an Apple developer account.

That thing about seeing only the desktop or window also bugs me out, I like how in RealVNC I can zoom to fill my phone with the Mac screen and move around with the zoom.

mistersquid 1 day ago | parent

> I was watching The Rest Is Science when this 1 minute video appeared on the right side with 230k views about a macOS app??

Do you have a link to this 1-minute video?

(a little later…) I think I found it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJnNkfHLdFw

alin23 1 day ago | parent

Yep here it is https://youtu.be/fJnNkfHLdFw

okrad 21 hours ago | parent

Can you share more about your workflow with Hyperframes and Claude for demo videos? The clips for Cling are great!

alin23 18 hours ago | parent

Thanks! I started with the prompt from https://www.aiformortals.co/blog/sonnet-5-5#test-1-make-the-... which helped a lot in creating a general direction. The default output otherwise is that fast paced, epilepsy inducing AI slop that doesn't explain anything.

It helped to give it access to the app code and ability to screenshot its UI and interact with it.

I mostly list the features I want showcased because I know best what needs demoing and what looks good on video, and then let it do a full video. There's still a lot of slop on the first try but it's a much better start than what I'd do by hand.

SomeonesAccount 20 hours ago | parent

Are you a creator of clop? I love the app, didn't realize they were on HN. Also windows support would be great.

alin23 18 hours ago | parent

Yes I made Clop, thanks! I won't be doing Windows apps anytime soon, I simply don't have a need for them and an app that I can't use daily will be a bad app.

SomeonesAccount 20 hours ago | parent

Could you please share your prompt and what tools it used to make these videos? They are amazing.

alin23 18 hours ago | parent

I used Hyperframes and started with the prompt from https://www.aiformortals.co/blog/sonnet-5-5#test-1-make-the-...

Gave it full access to the app code and ability to screenshot its UI and interact with it so it knows what it really works like in real life.

And then listed some features for it to showcase and let it one shot it. It needed a lot of polishing after that, but the start was the 80% I needed to make this feel possible.

mandeepj 18 hours ago | parent

> So much faster and seamless than VNC. Already helped me two times today.

Can you share how the experience different than the local screen recording via something like Screenshot App?

alin23 18 hours ago | parent

Not sure if we're talking about the same thing. I use this for clicking around my MacBook from my iPhone while I'm away. What you're describing is for recording videos of the phone .

mandeepj 17 hours ago | parent

I was trying to clarify your use case, which you've shared above.

> What you're describing is for recording videos of the phone .

I meant screen recording on a mac itself and not via a phone.

Anyway, thanks for your response. Your sites look great.

alin23 17 hours ago | parent

Thanks! Yes, I mostly need to change some setting with the system settings window or click on a dialog, and this is easier to use because it can show only that window and I don't have to log in or use a keyboard.

Surac 1 day ago | parent

Is a windows support planed? Seeing a windows window on iPad and control it with touch\pen

socalgal2 1 day ago | parent

In Oct 2026, if you want this you just ask your favorite LLM "look at this repo, can you add windows support?". Or "I need an app that does XYZ on Windows" and especially for something this specific, targetted, and small you'll likely have a working app in 1-2 hrs if not < 5 minutes.

Jakob 1 day ago | parent

I still have the original iPhone lying around. I really like its design but it’s too slow and the software too old.

I was always wondering whether a thin client concept like this could bring it to live again.

greenspam 1 day ago | parent

Is there a reverse app? I want to control my iphone apps from my mac since typing on iphone is painful and the iphone touchscreen keyboard seems to be less accurate and more laggy over time. And iPhone Mirroring feature is laggy for me for some reason.

voicedYoda 1 day ago | parent

Sidecar? IDK, i don't own an iphone

gnopgnip 1 day ago | parent

What would an app do that iphone mirroring doesn't?

bashwizard 1 day ago | parent

What iPhone mirroring doesn't in EU. It's not available here.

qingcharles 20 hours ago | parent

Work on Windows or Linux.

jkman 16 hours ago | parent

Even barring the other comments here, phone mirroring sucks. This app is 10x more performant lol

onebitwise 1 day ago | parent

Also iPhone mirroring is still not available in EU :(

Starmina 1 day ago | parent

Device Hub kinda fixes that w/ iOS 27 and macOS 27 (included with XCode)

dansquizsoft 1 day ago | parent

Maybe the EU should think about implementing less restrictive legal requirements for innovative technologies...

isodev 1 day ago | parent

Maybe someone in the US should sue Apple into stop abusing their market share to lock people into their walled garden of "joy". Also, innovation happens outside/before Apple these days.

dansquizsoft 1 day ago | parent

What’s iPhone mirroring to a Mac got to do with how Apple’s policies around its App Store work? (To be clear taking 30% and locking out competitors is, in my opinion, overreaching, but I fail to see why this should stop iPhone mirroring being a thing in the EU??)

isodev 20 hours ago | parent

> What’s iPhone mirroring to a Mac got to do with how Apple’s policies around its App Store

It doesn't, not releasing iPhone mirroring is apple’s malicious compliance with the DMA. They attempted multiple times to turn this into a PR stunt. In this case, it would be a question of making their “Remote Desktop” api available to developers.

bbx 19 hours ago | parent

TIL. I'm French but live in the UK. Never realised it was a non-EU feature. How come? What's the law that restricts it?

King-Aaron 1 day ago | parent

> typing on iphone is painful

I swear it seems to get worse with every new update too. Maddening.

outlore 1 day ago | parent

Also consider Astropad Workbench. This app doesn't get talked about enough in AI circles but the performance is top notch (no affiliation)

jdalgetty 22 hours ago | parent

$100/year - why can't it just be a one time purchase?

deepbuilds 1 day ago | parent

that looks really good, will def give it a try.

i also made something (getalmirah.com) let me know your feedback on that too...

ahel 21 hours ago | parent

I don't get the features: is it an app that auto-organizes the Desktop and moves the actual file into another folder + the cabinet UI?

zephyreon 1 day ago | parent

That CLAUDE.md file is eating up a ton of context.

herunan 1 day ago | parent

Oh wow yeah, it's endless!

ghboo0927 19 hours ago | parent

CLAUDE.md: 6,108 lines, 464 KB yeah too long

fbcpck 1 day ago | parent

This is super nice!

I've been using Sunshine + Moonlight and it required a lot of tinkering and breaks half the time.

Looks like now I can forego that setup, this is way way nicer! Thank you!

toppa33 1 day ago | parent

Downloaded, installed, loved and donated via GitHub. Awesome app mate, it’s so good.

00deadbeef 1 day ago | parent

I had to read a lot of text to understand this was a remote desktop app. You might get more users if you're clearer about what it is.

ericol 23 hours ago | parent

The very first line in the repository says:

> Any window from your Mac, on your iPhone and iPad.

I don't think it can get any more clear than that.

apt-apt-apt-apt 18 hours ago | parent

It can – what does a window from there mean?

Is it a screenshot tool or emulator or view-only screen sharing? You have to get through the second paragraph to understand what it is.

"Use any window" would be better I think.

00deadbeef 6 hours ago | parent

As clear as mud to me

jdalgetty 23 hours ago | parent

any way I could access just a single window like this from my linux laptop?

duckerduck 21 hours ago | parent

An intel release could be interesting for Mac OS installed into a VM.

inickt 21 hours ago | parent

I thought the same, looks like there is a PR investigating this: https://github.com/Saffsanity/sill/pull/88

Klovy 20 hours ago | parent

Cool project; I own some Apple gear myself—a MacBook and an iPhone—so this could definitely come in handy for me.

avidruntime 19 hours ago | parent

Would love a feature where selecting a window automatically resizes it to the aspect ratio of the iPhone, vertical or landscape, so it can be full screened losslessly on the iPhone.

jscheel 17 hours ago | parent

I was working on something similar, though specifically for grabbing the video output window from Cubase for transport to a web app I run on my ipad on the opposite side of my studio. This looks really well thought out. Super excited to try it.