Show HN: MeowDisplay Is iPhone Mirroring, but in Reverse (meowdisplay.app)

Not currently, haven't verified color profile accuracy on the iPhone yet, and HDR isn't supported as of now either.

I agree, I have benchmarks planned for the future.

As far as the latency on MeowDisplay, In my testing on Wifi, I measured around 14-17ms median from capture to receiver handoff, not e2e. I've also seen occasional spikes around 50-90ms and some stalled frames, you do notice the stalls but overall it's pretty responsive.

I've preferred to show the cursor as it is on the mac instead of rendering it locally on the phone which may make it feel smoother but the trade-off is that it may not accurately represent where the cursor actually is on the mac if things lag or hang.

Then again, it does depend on the connection.

That's pretty much been the only compromise I've had to make when migrating to an entirely Linux ecosystem at home. I settled on NoMachine as my pick of 'remote control desktop' software after trying a whole lot of other options (including various flavours of VNC).

Every time I use it I'm reminded of how good RDP is/was.

Assuming you are remoting into machines on your local network, I have made the Very Dumbest Compromise that I actually love, which is just leaving them connected to displays natively and creating a fake display on the controlling machine that runs a fullscreened remote desktop session set to potato. It's the only way I'll even bother to use a mac anymore, I'm not wasting another second fighting their godawful mouse input.

Sunshine/moonlight combo is still best streaming I've ever used, both in term of quality and latency. Another best thing is the client is available on many platforms.

Yes, RDP is actually more like sending commands to a remote GPU. VNC and the others are, as far as I know, just doing screen-capture and then possibly some compression on the resulting video stream.

The RDP specifications are partially documented by MS, and even the publicly available parts are huge.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocol...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocol...

Sidecar works to extend your Mac's display to iPads but does not work on iPhones.

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The question I saw coming, and was hoping for too. Thank you for asking!

There's quite a bit of overlap in what we're both trying to do. I've come across Sill and tried it as well, and it's nice.

I think the biggest difference for most people would be the iPhone experience across both apps. I've specifically prioritized making the whole "use your Mac from your phone" experience better, and the iPad has received the same care too, with additional customizability to make use of the extra screen space.

I've looked at quite a few remote desktop apps, how they've approached things and the trade-offs they've made, and weighed those against how I'd want MeowDisplay to do things.

Part of MeowDisplay also came from a question: why hasn't Apple done something like this natively? The iPad has Sidecar, so I've often imagined how Apple might've approached it for the iPhone, and how I'd do it based on my experience with remote desktop apps.

Coming to how they're different, I think the biggest distinctions are how I've chosen to handle Mac windows, the limited screen space on phones, and the overall UX.

Sill's optional virtual display moves the selected window onto a separate display sized for the receiver, which can resize the actual Mac window. MeowDisplay's Window view keeps the Mac window's existing size and position, adapting how it's displayed on the phone instead.

My reasoning behind this is that most desktop apps weren't designed for phone-sized windows. Resizing them can make their interfaces cramped or awkward, and I'd rather preserve their original layouts, even if that means occasionally zooming, which I find acceptable.

Sill currently focuses on displaying one window or the desktop at a time, while MeowDisplay offers a different multitasking workflow with multiple windows arranged in tabs and panes, and floating windows coming in 2.1.

Another difference is the screen space. Sill's portrait layout has the streamed picture at the top with a dedicated trackpad below it, although it also offers a Larger Picture option and direct touch.

I've questioned why we even need a separate trackpad when the whole phone is already a touch surface. MeowDisplay lets you use the displayed content itself for Direct Touch or trackpad-style input, without sacrificing a portion of the screen for a dedicated trackpad. Personally, I find that screen space too valuable to give up.

There's a difference in how you navigate through the UI as well. Sill has window thumbnails and app selection, while MeowDisplay uses Stage Peek, which you pull from the screen's edge to browse and search windows and apps, along with an expanded window overview.

So yupp, we're both trying to solve a similar problem, just with different approaches and trade-offs. I think some people might prefer Sill's approach, and others might prefer MeowDisplay's.

Or RustDesk?

OT but nice to see you're still around!

Yup, I'll add a snippet in the post, thanks,

For answering your question, MeowDisplay started as a fork of OpenDisplay which had the foundations for screen capture, virtual displays, encoding and the iPhone/iPad receivers built, I've credited OpenDisplay and its developer Philip in the README under "Built on OpenDisplay"

After that, I've taken a more phone-first approach, with quite a bit of work on the interaction, streaming and security layers.

So it's built on OpenDisplay and not just a UI layer over it, MeowDisplay is going in a different direction, If you only need the core second-display experience, or compatibility that the OpenDisplay project serves better, OpenDisplay is well worth a look.

Likewise, Glad to have another person thinking on similar tracks!

Same here but I also replaced tailnet for our company with it as the non tech people found it too hard to use.

Will you open source it?

Is there even a way to wake up a shut and sleeping MacBook? Or keep it awake at all? I'd be interested if there was that didn't have some caveat that will kill the battery.

This seems more relevant than ever in days that we're sending off an LLM prompt and then letting it chug away for who knows how long. I tend to just leave my screen on with the mouse in a hotcorner that disables the screensaver.

Nope! You do not need same Apple ID accounts or be on the same Wifi, it has AWDL for Apple devices and a similar equivalent for Android is being looked into.

Similar idea, but not VNC. MeowDisplay uses its own streaming and control protocols, so you need the companion Mac app.

I've considered supporting macOS's built-in Screen Sharing too, though with fewer features.

Touch your Mac.

The way you’d be uncomfortable telling your friends about.

This will be our little secret.