saved
Sill: any Mac window, live on your iPhone or iPad
Hraness wrote this summary from a saved copy of the source. Quotations are taken word for word from the source.
gist
Sill is a free, open-source Apache-licensed pair of apps that streams one Mac window, or the whole desktop, to an iPhone or iPad as HEVC video and sends touch, Pencil, trackpad, and keyboard input back. Devices connect directly over the local network, USB, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, or your own VPN, with no account or server.
ideas
- Window, not whole screen. ScreenCaptureKit captures a single window, hardware-encodes it with VideoToolbox, and drops frames instead of queuing them when the link lags.
- Input and menus flow back. Taps, three-finger gestures, Apple Pencil, clipboard text, and the app's menus are relayed through macOS Accessibility.
- Pair once, pinned keys. Devices pair with a 12-digit code or a USB cable, then every TLS 1.3 connection is pinned to those keys; Remote Access works through your own VPN like Tailscale.
- Device-aware layouts. Text size via Aa resizes the Mac window, an optional virtual display keeps covered windows updating, and iPhone Duo layouts follow the hinge.
- Deliberate limits. No sound, one window at a time, and the Mac app ships outside the App Store partly because the virtual display uses a private API.
quotes
“There is no account and no server in between.”
“When the encoder or the link falls behind, Sill drops frames rather than queue them, so the picture stays current.”
“Swift and Apple frameworks only, no third-party dependencies, nothing that needs a server, and latency before picture quality.”
“A tip unlocks nothing: every feature is free.”