Perch BETA
See and use your Mac from your phone, a tablet or another computer: the screen, the sound, the mouse and keyboard. Free and open source, with no account and no servers in between.
Prefer a tab that doesn't show this address?
A small app on your Mac sends its screen and sound straight to this page in your browser, and your clicks and typing go straight back. The two connect directly to each other, encrypted, the same way video calls in a browser do.
One line in Terminal. Perch lives in the menu bar and starts by itself when you log in.
Perch's Setup shows a code on the Mac. Scan it, approve with Face ID or Touch ID, and add Perch to your authenticator app.
Open this site, sign in with your passkey and a 6-digit code, and your Mac is right there. Touch, mouse, keyboard and sound all work.
Open Terminal (in Applications › Utilities), paste this line and press Return:
curl -fsSL https://just-rice.github.io/perch/install.sh | bash
It downloads the latest Perch from GitHub, checks the download against the checksum published with it, puts Perch in your Applications folder and opens Setup. Setup walks you through the rest: two macOS permissions, your authenticator app and pairing your first device.
Perch is free and isn't registered with Apple's paid developer programme. A Mac blocks unregistered apps that were downloaded in a browser ("Perch can't be opened because Apple cannot check it"). Files fetched by Terminal aren't marked that way, so the app simply opens. You can read exactly what the command does: install.sh.
Rather download it yourself? Get Perch.zip from the
latest release, unzip it, move Perch to
Applications and open it. When macOS refuses, open System Settings › Privacy & Security, scroll down
and click Open Anyway next to the message about Perch. Or
build it from the code.
Open Perch's Setup from the menu bar and choose Uninstall Perch, or run
curl -fsSL https://just-rice.github.io/perch/uninstall.sh | bash. Either way Perch stops starting
at login, its settings and Keychain entry are deleted and the app goes to the Trash.
This website is only the keypad. The lock is on your Mac: it checks every sign-in itself.
A passkey (Face ID, Touch ID or your phone), then a code from your authenticator app. Nothing is shown or sent until both pass. Five wrong tries locks sign-in for a while.
Your screen goes straight from your Mac to your browser, encrypted. Free public message services only pass along scrambled "here's how to reach me" notes, and can't read them.
The menu bar shows when someone is connected and macOS shows its screen-recording light. Only one device at a time, and you can end it from the Mac.
No passkey on the device you're using? Use your phone's passkey from it (most browsers offer "use a phone or tablet"), or turn on the optional backup sign-in: your Mac's name, a password and the 6-digit code. More in the privacy page and the security notes.