Away from home
At home your iPhone finds your Mac on the network by itself. Away, it dials your Mac directly at an address your Mac gave it, over Tailscale or a port you forward. Same pairing, same encryption, still no server of ours. Off until you turn it on.
- Set it up with Tailscale
- Without Tailscale
- How you’re connected
- What’s different away
- Wake Your Mac
- What stays the same
Set it up with Tailscale#
Tailscale is free for personal use and gives each of your devices a private address that works from any network. Once, on both:
- Install Tailscale on your Mac and on your iPhone, and sign in to both with the same account. In the iPhone's Tailscale app, your Mac should be in its list of devices.
- Turn Tailscale on on the iPhone, and allow the VPN when iOS asks. In Macrophone's Settings › Away from home, “Tailscale on this iPhone” says On.
- In Macrophone on your Mac, open Devices › Away from home and turn on Remote access. The pane shows this Mac's Tailscale address and name.
- Open Macrophone on your iPhone once while you're at home. Your Mac's address arrives on its own and is kept with the pairing.
After that it just works: when your iPhone can't find the Mac nearby, it dials the Tailscale address, and the status line reads Ready · Mac · away from home. To try it at home, turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the phone for a minute; otherwise a nearby iPhone talks to the Mac directly.
Without Tailscale#
Forward Macrophone's remote port (47821, changeable in Devices › Away from home) to your Mac on your router, then type your home's address into Settings › Away from home on the iPhone, such as home.example.com:47821. Tailscale is the easier and safer path: nothing is open to the internet.
How you’re connected#
The sign beside your Mac's name at the top of the iPhone app, and Settings › Connected now, say how the two are talking:
| Wi-Fi | The same network at home. |
|---|---|
| Nearby | A direct link between the two devices, on networks that keep devices apart. |
| Tailscale | Away from home, over your Tailscale network. |
| Internet | Away from home, through a port you forwarded. |
The Mac's menu says the same (“away from home”). When you get home, the connection moves back to the home network by itself.
What’s different away#
- The window you watch streams at a lower rate and size, so it stays smooth on a cellular link, and it travels on a lane of its own, so a lost bit of video never holds up a tap, a key or an answer.
- Your Mac's sound, if it's on, comes at a lower rate too.
- Your iPhone redials the moment its network changes (Wi-Fi to cellular, a VPN coming up), so the switch to Tailscale takes a few seconds, not a minute.
- Alerts and everything else work as at home.
Wake Your Mac#
If your Mac has gone to sleep, Wake Your Mac appears beside its name on the phone. It works on the same Wi-Fi as the Mac (not from away), and needs Wake for network access on in the Mac's Energy settings; Devices in the Mac app says if it's off. A closed laptop on battery may not wake.
What stays the same#
- The pairing and the end-to-end encryption are the same ones you use at home. A device that isn't paired can't connect, and the remote door is only ever open while Remote access is on.
- There is no server and no account. Over Tailscale the connection runs between your own two devices on your own Tailscale network, and what travels is still encrypted end to end by Macrophone's pairing key.
- The addresses live on your iPhone with the pairing. Diagnostics count them and never print them.