PhoneDeck - Turn your iPhone into a free Mac controller
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You already own a StreamDeck. It's your iPhone.
PhoneDeck turns your iPhone into a fully customizable Mac controller, media controls, app launcher, custom buttons, all on your phone's screen. No hardware. No subscription. Free.
Built by a solo developer in 7 days because I needed it myself.
Works out of the box. No setup headaches.
Download Now: Phonedeck.io
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PhoneDeck
How does the connection actually work, WiFi only or Bluetooth too? Latency matters a lot for media controls or trigger buttons during a screen share.
Genuinely curious how you're keeping this free long term. Solo dev, no subscription... is the plan to monetize some other way later, or is this just a passion project you're fine running at a loss on?
Dune's already doing context aware Mac automation and Keyboard Maestro's the heavy weight for scripting workflows. What's PhoneDeck's actual lane here. Is it meant to be the simpler, more casual layer on top or a real alternative to those?
"No setup headaches" is the part that will make this or break this for me. Every Mac controller app I've tried needs some combo of permissions or network config that breaks the first time your router restarts. If it actually just works out the box that's worth the download by itself.
Free with no subscription is rare in this space. Respect.
The obvious trade off vs a dedicated StreamDeck is that your phone's now tied up as a controller instead of free for other stuff, and you need somewhere to prop it. Not a dealbreaker but worth weighing against the "free" part.
This is real prob, wanting a StreamDeck but not wanting to drop the money on hardware. Using a device people already own instead of adding more gear is the right instinct.
Compared to Bezel which is about mirroring your iPhone onto your Mac, PhoneDeck sounds like it's going the other direction, using the phone as the input device rather than the display. Cool that both approaches exist for people who want different things out of that phone Mac link.
Downloading this now to test with OBS during my next stream setup. Will report back on whether the media controls actually replace my physical deck or just handle the basics.