Control your Mac from your iPhone, in Safari
You install ManyScreens once, on the Mac. The iPhone or iPad needs nothing but Safari: open manyscreens.com, sign in, tap the Mac. It works on the same Wi‑Fi and from anywhere else, over mobile data included, with nothing to set up on your router.
Once, on the Mac
- Download ManyScreens for macOS — Apple silicon or Intel, macOS 12 or newer — and open it.
- Create an account in its window and confirm the email we send you. Then click Share this computer. That pairs the Mac with your account; there is no code to copy.
- Grant the two permissions macOS asks for. Screen Recording lets ManyScreens see the screen, Accessibility lets it move the pointer and type. ManyScreens shows a checklist until both are on.
- Switch on Start at login in ManyScreens’ settings, so the Mac is reachable again after a restart. It is off until you turn it on.
From then on ManyScreens sits in the menu bar and updates itself. While someone is watching, the menu bar shows a dot, and the first viewer to arrive raises a notification.
Then, on the iPhone
Open manyscreens.com in Safari, sign in and tap the Mac. A phone is not a mouse, so the viewer is not a shrunken desktop. It is built for a thumb:
- Look or control. A switch at the top starts on Look, so a thumb resting on the glass moves nothing. Switch to Control and a tap clicks, a double tap double‑clicks, and dragging one finger moves the pointer.
- Pinch to zoom, up to 8×, to hit a small button on a large display.
- Two fingers to scroll while you are in Control.
- Press and hold to right‑click.
- A row of the keys a phone keyboard lacks: ctrl, alt, cmd and shift that stay held for the next key, esc, tab, the arrows, delete, return, home, end, page up and page down, and the Mac shortcuts a phone cannot send: ⌘⇥, ⌘Space, Mission Control, ⌘W, ⌘Q and Force Quit. There are no F‑keys.
Away from home
Both ends dial outward, so there is nothing to forward and no VPN to run. ManyScreens tries a direct path between the phone and the Mac first. Where the networks make that impossible, the picture goes through a relay on port 443, encrypted end to end, so the relay forwards packets it cannot read.
On a direct path you get up to 2560 pixels wide at 30 frames a second, on Free and Pro alike. Through the relay, Free drops to 1280 pixels at 10 frames a second. Pro keeps 1280 pixels at 15 frames on Auto, and you can pick a higher setting by hand.
Clipboard, files and sound
- Clipboard, text only. Copy on the Mac and it reaches the iPhone’s clipboard with your next tap. Paste into the viewer and the Mac pastes it there.
- Files both ways. Pick a file on the iPhone and it lands in the Mac’s Downloads folder. To bring one back, Fetch a file opens a dialog on the Mac, you choose the file through the picture, and Safari downloads it. There is no size limit and no plan restriction.
- Sound is a Pro feature: the Mac’s own audio, off until you turn it on, and sent only to the viewer who asked.
What it will not do
- There is no ManyScreens app in the App Store yet. The web page does everything above; an app is on the way for anyone who would rather have one.
- A Mac that is asleep cannot be reached: ManyScreens has no wake‑on‑LAN. Keep it from sleeping while it is on power.
- After a restart, the login window needs the optional Reachable before login service. Nothing, ManyScreens included, gets past FileVault before macOS has started.
Free for everyone until 1 January 2027
After that, Free stays: up to three computers, full quality on direct connections, no time limit. Pro is €4.99 a month or €39 a year.
Download for the Mac Create a free account
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