Does it cost anything?

Free during the beta. Pricing will be announced before that changes.

An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) with macOS 14 or later and an iPhone with iOS 17 or later, signed in to the same iCloud account. No Farglass account or sign-up. Install the Mac app first, then the iPhone app. Tailscale is optional.

What does it cost my Mac?

About 85 MB of memory and 2% of one CPU core in our measurement. Look for Farglass in Activity Monitor to check yours.

The Mac itself: CPU, memory, heat, disk, battery and power, and whether it stays awake. And what runs on it: the processes using the most, dev servers and the ports they listen on, simulators and self-hosted CI runners. A process is a process, whoever started it.

What if I only have a Mac?

The Mac app works on its own. It lives in the menu bar and shows what’s running and what’s using the Mac. The iPhone app adds that view when you’re away.

Why not just Activity Monitor?

It stays on the Mac you walked away from, and it shows you node. Farglass tells you it’s Next.js on :3000 in storefront, says in a plain sentence why the Mac is hot, and puts that on your phone with a Stop button.

Only to open dev servers from your phone when you’re away from your network. Farglass reads Tailscale’s status to build the link, and the phone then connects to the Mac directly. It never changes your Tailscale settings.

Each Mac reports every 15 seconds. A tap on the phone reaches the Mac within a few seconds.

Manage your Mac from your iPhone.

See what’s using your Mac’s memory, heat and battery, and stop it from anywhere. Keep it awake, open its dev servers, check its CI runners. Whatever it’s running.

Download for MacGet the iPhone app Email me the Mac link Email me the Mac link

Free during the beta. macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon. .

Free during the beta. The iPhone app shows your Mac, so you need the Mac app too (macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon): email yourself the link.

Farglass needs a Mac (macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon) and an iPhone. Email yourself the link and open it on the Mac.

No account
No Farglass server holds your data
The phone cannot run commands
How it stays private

On the Mac

The Farglass menu-bar panel on a Mac: Next.js has kept a core busy for 35 minutes. CPU 71%, memory 40 of 48 GB, temperature 96 degrees, fans at 5,200 rpm; Next.js uses 6.8 GB.

The same Mac in the iPhone app: CPU 71%, memory 39.6 of 48 GB, temperature 96 degrees, fans at 5,200 rpm, and Next.js at 6.8 GB.

In the app

On your Lock Screen

Farglass on an iPhone, Dana's MacBook Pro: CPU 71%, memory 39.6 of 48 GB, temperature 96 degrees, fans at 5,200 rpm, and the apps using it most: a Next.js dev server at 6.8 GB, Xcode and Simulator.

Away from your desk

Fans at 5,200 rpm. 96 degrees.

Every Mac’s memory, battery, heat and fans at a glance, wherever you are.

Farglass on an iPhone: Next.js on port 3000 in shop. Its memory keeps growing, from 1.2 GB to 6.8 GB in the last 3 hours. Open, Pause and Stop server.

Farglass on an iPhone, Dana's MacBook Pro after the Next.js server was stopped: CPU 22%, memory 14.2 of 48 GB, temperature 61 degrees, fans at 2,100 rpm.

From anywhere

Next.js ate 6.8 GB. Stop it.

Farglass names the process heating your Mac, says why in a plain sentence, and lets you pause or stop it with one tap.

Mac is hot and throttling (96°)macOS is slowing the CPU down to cool off. Next.js is using 140% CPU, the most of any process.
now
Export finished · shop-promo.mov · 14mFinal Cut Pro
4m ago
Battery draining fast: 32% an hour61% left, about 1h 54m at this pace. Draining on battery: Xcode (120%).
22m ago
Battery guardrail: 20%Released the awake hold. The Mac will sleep to save the battery.
1h ago

1It taps you, with the cause

Farglass on an iPhone: Why is it warm? Next.js on port 3000 in shop, 7 GB of memory. What's heating it: Next.js is the busiest process, using about 1.4 CPU cores, and holds 6.8 GB of memory that keeps growing. What you can do: stop or pause the dev server from Farglass. Apple Intelligence, on this iPhone, from what the Mac reports. It can be wrong.

2Tap it: why is it warm?Apple Intelligence, on your iPhone. Needs an iPhone that has it.

Farglass Settings on an iPhone: Interrupt me when, with four switches (an export or render has finished, the battery is about to stop a Mac, a Mac's battery is draining fast, a Mac is overheating), and: nothing else pings you, it's all in the app, at most 4 pings an hour.

3You choose what can interrupt you

Only when it matters

It taps you when it’s needed. Not before.

The Mac is hot, and what’s heating it. The battery is draining fast, or the guard lets go. An export or render finished or failed. Everything else stays quiet in the app, and you choose which of the four can interrupt you.

Farglass on an iPhone: Next.js on port 3000 in shop, a big Open button, and the Tailscale address http://dana-mac.tailnet.ts.net:3000 found, with the Wi-Fi address below it.

An iPhone in Safari at danas-mac.tailnet.ts.net:3000, showing the Storefront admin dashboard that the Mac is serving: revenue $12,480, 214 orders, a seven-day revenue chart and recent orders.

At the café

Tap a dev server. It opens on your iPhone.

The dev server on your Mac at home opens on your phone from anywhere, over Tailscale. Farglass finds the address.

Farglass on an iPhone, Dana's MacBook Pro: kept awake in Auto while an export runs, then it sleeps, CPU 22%, memory 14.2 of 48 GB, temperature 61 degrees, fans quiet.

Lid shut, still working

Close the lid. It keeps working.

In Auto, Farglass keeps your Mac awake while an app holds it awake, like an export or a render, or a process you picked, even with the lid shut. The battery guard and the thermal guard let go before it runs itself flat or hot. Lid-closed mode is optional, with a one-time setup on the Mac.

The Farglass Developer tab on an iPhone: a Mac mini's dev servers by project and branch, then two GitHub Actions runners, mini-1 running CI Verify for pull request 248 and mini-2 waiting.

At home

The mini in the corner is running CI.

Its self-hosted runners, the job they’re on and how the last one went. No GitHub token.

An iPhone Home Screen with the Farglass widget: a ring for the MacBook Pro (battery 82%, hot, kept awake), the Mac mini and the Mac Studio (both on power).

On your Home Screen

A ring for every Mac.

Small and medium widgets, and Lock Screen ones, so the news is there before you open anything.

How it works

Install Farglass on your Mac. It lives in the menu bar and watches what’s running.
Use the same iCloud account on your iPhone. That’s the pairing. No codes, no sign-up.
Open the iPhone app. Your Mac is already there, with a home-screen widget and lock-screen Live Activities.

Where your data goes

There is no Farglass account, and no Farglass server holds your data. Your Mac and iPhone talk through the private database of your own iCloud. The one thing we run is a small relay that tells Apple to refresh your home-screen widget. It never sees a reading.

Sent to your iCloud: CPU, memory, swap, disk, heat and battery, every 15 seconds.
What’s running: names, ports, project and branch, and folders, shown with your home folder as ~.
Whether each dev server, simulator and CI runner is alive, what a runner is working on, and how its last job went.
Your Wi-Fi network’s name and the Mac’s local and Tailscale addresses, so the phone can build links.
Never sent: Whole command lines. Secrets in arguments are masked before a name is kept.
Environment variables, or what’s inside your files.
Your prompts, what you type, or your screen.

Show the details: Mac permissions, what the phone can do, the widget relay

Mac permissions: None of Accessibility, Full Disk Access, Screen Recording or Automation. It isn’t sandboxed, which is how it can see other processes. Your admin password only for the optional lid-closed mode, which adds one rule allowing pmset -a disablesleep.
The phone can: Keep the Mac awake, let it sleep, or set a timer. Stop, pause or resume a server or job the Mac listed. Turn lid-closed mode and the battery guard on or off, and check for an app update.
The phone can’t: Run a shell or any command. Stop an app or macOS. Touch anything the Mac didn’t list. Each tap travels as one record in your private iCloud database, which only your Apple ID can write, and the Mac checks it against a fixed list.
The widget relay: Only your Mac calls it, with your phone’s widget push token and a random key your Macs share. It stores the token and a SHA-256 hash of that key, dropped after 60 days without a push, and sends Apple {"aps":{"content-changed":true}}. No logs of its own. Cloudflare, which runs it, sees your Mac’s IP address.

Questions

Does it cost anything?: Free during the beta. Pricing will be announced before that changes.
What do I need?: An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) with macOS 14 or later and an iPhone with iOS 17 or later, signed in to the same iCloud account. No Farglass account or sign-up. Install the Mac app first, then the iPhone app. Tailscale is optional.
Is my data private?: Yes. There is no Farglass account, and no Farglass server holds your data: your Mac and iPhone talk through the private database of your own iCloud. The section above, Where your data goes, lists exactly what is sent and what the phone can and can’t do.
What does it cost my Mac?: About 85 MB of memory and 2% of one CPU core in our measurement. Look for Farglass in Activity Monitor to check yours.
What can it manage?: The Mac itself: CPU, memory, heat, disk, battery and power, and whether it stays awake. And what runs on it: the processes using the most, dev servers and the ports they listen on, simulators and self-hosted CI runners. A process is a process, whoever started it.
What if I only have a Mac?: The Mac app works on its own. It lives in the menu bar and shows what’s running and what’s using the Mac. The iPhone app adds that view when you’re away.
Why not just Activity Monitor?: It stays on the Mac you walked away from, and it shows you node. Farglass tells you it’s Next.js on :3000 in storefront, says in a plain sentence why the Mac is hot, and puts that on your phone with a Stop button.
Do I need Tailscale?: Only to open dev servers from your phone when you’re away from your network. Farglass reads Tailscale’s status to build the link, and the phone then connects to the Mac directly. It never changes your Tailscale settings.
How fresh is it?: Each Mac reports every 15 seconds. A tap on the phone reaches the Mac within a few seconds.

Your Mac, from anywhere.

The beta is open to anyone who leaves a Mac running: renders and exports, dev servers, CI.

Download for MacGet the iPhone app Email me the Mac link Email me the Mac link

The iPhone app comes through TestFlight, Apple’s free app for trying betas. Install TestFlight first, then tap “Get the iPhone app” and “Accept”. About a minute.

Now on your iPhone: scan this with the camera. It opens the beta page, which asks you to install TestFlight (Apple’s free beta app) first, then tap “Accept”.

Get the iPhone app

Install it on a phone signed in to the same iCloud account as the Mac. No other account, no codes.

The iPhone app comes through TestFlight, Apple’s free app for trying betas. Install TestFlight first, then tap “Get the iPhone app” and “Accept”. About a minute.

Now on your iPhone: scan this with the camera. It opens the beta page, which asks you to install TestFlight (Apple’s free beta app) first, then tap “Accept”.