Main -- Main Archive Page -- October 2007 -- Telekinesis - Control your Mac from your iPhone | « Rock Talk, and more - Trying out a new version of MT »
October 28, 2007
Telekinesis - Control your Mac from your iPhone
Most of the new Apple computers shipping today come with a neat remote control, allowing the user to control presentations, the iTunes media player, DVD player and Front Row while away from the keyboard. Unfortunately, my G5 tower doesn't have one — but I do have an iPhone and I've recently found a fun web application called iPhone Remote that makes good use of the iPhone's display and modern web browser.
It's a tiny bit geeky to setup, but it is worth it.
iPhone Remote installs on your Mac and sets up a self-signed secure website on your computer that you can access from your iPhone (the iPhone and Mac need to be on the same network, be that WiFi or bridged Ethernet/WiFi). The iPhone Remote application runs as a standard Mac application, so you can see it running in the Dock and quit it when you don't need it anymore. The web page runs on a non-standard port, so if you are already running the computer's built-in web server, iPhone Remote won't interfere with it.
iPhone Remote running the Now Playing iTunes controller.
When you first start the application it will ask you to choose a name and password that the website will ask for before allowing a browser to use the iPhone Remote web application. The authors of the application suggest that you use a name and password different from your Mac login, for security reasons (the password appears to be encrypted/hased, but I'm not sure how secure it is).
To connect to iPhone Remote from your iPhone, open an HTTPS connection to port 5010 on your Mac. Most people should be able to open System Preferences from the Apple Menu and then click on Sharing. Under the field for Computer Name there should be a sentence that reads Computers on your local network can access your computer at: The text that follows should be your computer's name with spaces replaced with dashes and .local at the end.
So, assuming your Mac's name is "My Mac" you should type the following into Safari's address bar on your iPhone:
https://My-Mac.local:5010/
When you connect, Safari will give you a warning message about the website's security certificate. This is normal for a self-signed certificate, and you should tell Safari to continue and then log in.
When you finish logging in, the default web page shows the following buttons (iPhone Remote "tapps" applications):
- Applications - Shows the contents of your Applications folder and allows you to launch applications from your iPhone
- Camera - Allow you to control your Mac's built-in camera (I guess, I don't have one and the button doesn't do anything on my Mac).
- Documents - Shows the contents of your Documents folder and allows you to look at some kinds of documents on the iPhone (anything Safari would be able to open on its own). For iWorks documents, you can navigate inside the document's package and view the document's Thumbnail.
- Files - A browser of your home folder. It does a good job of showing custom icons attached to folders and files and has the same file preview abilities as Documents.
- Remote - A basic iTunes remote control.
- Screen - Remotely view your screen and click, drag and type on your Mac from the iPhone. Very cool, but a little awkward.
- Scripts - If you have any AppleScripts saved in the Script folder in your Library folder, you can run them from this menu. This might be the most useful part of iPhone Remote, if you are handy with AppleScript.
- Spotlight - Search your computer using your Mac's Spotlight search software.
- Terminal - This button gave me an error message on my Mac (running Mac OS 10.5), but I assume it is supposed to give you command line access to your Mac.
The author's of iPhone Remote have included the ability for folks to create their own services that create new buttons in the menu and offer expanded functionality. I've tried out Now Playing, which gives a nicer iTunes remote control (with album art and the ability to access playlists) and Uniremote, which is a remote control that has been adapted for several different applications.
The iPhone Remote project is hosted on code.google.com as Telekinesis.