How to Pair Your iPhone with Your Mac

One-time setup, three parts. After the first pairing, opening Peering on your iPhone is the only step left.

Install Peering for Mac first. It is the half that shares the screen, and the one your iPhone connects to. The iPhone app finds it automatically once both are on the same network.

1. Let Peering access your Mac

The Mac app opens straight to this screen the first time, and stays here until both permissions are granted: a host that only pretends to work is worse than one that says plainly what it is missing.

Accessibility. Turns gestures and keys from your iPhone into input on this Mac. Without it, you can see the Mac but cannot control it.
Screen Recording. Sends a live picture of this Mac to your iPhone. Without it, your iPhone connects to a black screen.

Accessibility takes effect immediately. Screen Recording is only read when the app starts, so after allowing it in System Settings, Peering asks you to relaunch to pick it up. Both buttons open the exact System Settings pane you need.

Peering's Let Peering access this Mac screen, showing Accessibility and Screen Recording as required, each with an Allow button. — What you'll see on the Mac the first time you open Peering.

2. Decide whether this Mac stays reachable while you're away

Optional, and every switch here defaults off. This step exists because it used to be a setting nobody found, tucked behind the menu bar icon; now it is asked once, plainly, before you get to the part where you actually use the app.

Keep Mac awake. No idle sleep, no display sleep, no extra permission prompt. It does not survive the lid being shut, and is lifted automatically when Peering quits.
Keep it awake only between certain hours. A schedule for the switch above, instead of awake around the clock.
Wake it up every day. A daily wake time. Once a Mac has gone to sleep, nothing else here can reach it again until something wakes it.
Keep running with the lid closed. The one that survives the lid shutting. macOS only offers this through pmset, so it asks for your administrator password once, and while it is on the Mac does not sleep at all.

Skip this and every switch stays off. You can turn any of them on later from Settings, with the same names and the same explanations.

Peering's Leaving this Mac at home screen, showing the Keep Mac awake, schedule, daily wake, and lid-closed switches, all off. — The four away-from-home switches. All optional, all off to start.

3. Pair your first iPhone

With both permissions granted, this Mac starts listening and shows three ways to reach it:

On the same network. Open Peering on your iPhone. It finds this Mac by itself, and both screens show the same six digits to confirm the first time.
By address. If discovery is blocked where you are, enter the Mac's address and port, shown on screen, on your iPhone by hand.
From another network. Not on the same Wi-Fi yet? Scan the device-ID QR code shown on the Mac from Peering on your iPhone, or type the ID in by hand.

Confirming the six digits is what pairs the two devices: each one already generated its own key, and the code is how you tell Peering that the device on the other end is the one in front of you. Once confirmed, both remember the other's key, and every later connection is a tap.

Peering's Pair your first iPhone screen, showing the three ways to connect and a QR code for pairing from another network. — Waiting for a first connection: same network, by address, or from anywhere.

What if my iPhone is on a different network?

The first pairing needs the two devices to share a network, or the "from another network" QR code and device ID above. After that one confirmation, your iPhone and Mac find each other from anywhere, which is what reaching your Mac from anywhere covers.

Download Peering for Mac