Screens 5

Screens 5 is a remote desktop app from Edovia: from an iPhone, an iPad, a Mac or an Apple Vision Pro, you see another computer’s screen and control it as if you were sitting in front of it. Cole uses it to reach the Mac mini from anywhere, for everything a terminal cannot do.

What it does

Edovia’s own description is short: “Control your Mac, Windows PC, Linux PC, or Raspberry Pi from your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Vision Pro”. On a Mac it connects to the built-in Screen Sharing service; Windows PCs, Linux PCs and a Raspberry Pi need a VNC server installed, since Screens speaks the VNC protocol (also called RFB).

The features that make it better than a basic VNC viewer:

• Touch Mode and Trackpad Mode. On a phone or tablet, tap where you want to click, or drive a pointer the way you would on a laptop’s trackpad. A hardware keyboard, mouse or trackpad works too.
• Curtain mode. It blacks out the remote Mac’s own display while you work, so nobody at the desk sees what you are doing.
• Multiple displays. Pick one display of the remote machine, or see them all at once; it remembers your choice.
• File transfer. Move files between your device and a remote Mac.
• Adaptive quality. The picture adjusts to the connection, so it stays usable on a weak signal.
• Screens Connect. A small helper on the Mac makes it reachable remotely “without complicated network setup”.

Where it fits

The Mac mini spends much of its life without anyone in front of it, running agents in tmux. Most of the time a terminal over SSH is all it needs, from a laptop or from Termius on the phone. Screens covers the moments that need a real screen, such as:

• clicking through a macOS permission dialog an agent’s tool triggered;
• watching an iOS simulator or an app build in Xcode;
• logging in at the console, which some tasks need (Xcode’s UI tests, for one, can hang at the login window);
• anything in a browser that wants a real login.

With the Mac on Cole’s tailnet, the phone can reach it by name from anywhere, with no ports opened on the home network. Screens Connect is the alternative for a Mac that is not on a private network like that.

Set it up

1. On the Mac, turn on Screen Sharing in System Settings, under General, then Sharing.
2. Install Screens 5 on the device you will connect from. It is sold on the App Store only, and one purchase covers iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro. There is a seven-day free trial; after that it is a subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase ($29.99 per year ($4.99 monthly, $199.99 lifetime) (as of Oct 28, 2026, apps.apple.com)).
3. Add the Mac by its name on your network or tailnet (or set up Screens Connect), and connect.

Edovia lists the requirements as iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, macOS 14.6 or visionOS 26 on the device running Screens, and it can connect to Macs as old as OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Tips

• Use curtain mode whenever the Mac’s own screen is visible to others.
• Prefer the terminal when you can. SSH and tmux use a sliver of the bandwidth a screen does and keep running if the connection drops. Screens is for the parts that need pixels.
• Keep the Mac awake. A sleeping Mac answers neither Screens nor SSH; Cole’s caf helper keeps it up for a set number of hours (caffeinate, htop and Friends).