DeckPilot vs Relay Shortcut Trigger
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
DeckPilot
Transform your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch into custom button decks for your Mac. Streamline workflows with customizable buttons, macros, and gestures that adapt to your active application. Enjoy tactile feedback and dynamic visual cues for enhanced productivity.
- Customizable button decks for Mac apps
- Macro builder with AppleScript and Shortcuts integration
- Tactile feedback and customizable haptics
- Dynamic button states and visual cues
- Trackpad gesture emulation
- Touch Bar functionality on mobile devices
- MIDI support for DAWs
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Made for people who care about how they work with their Mac. The keyboard, mouse, and trackpad shape how you reach into your Mac. There's another way. DeckPilot turns your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch into custom button decks that follow whichever app you're in. Logic, Xcode, Figma, Slack: the right buttons are always under your thumb. Quick to set up Install on your Mac and iPhone, connect once over Wi-Fi or USB. Auto-reconnects the way AirDrop does. No hardware to buy. Buttons for everything Tap to open Figma. Tap to mute Zoom. Tap to fire a 5-step macro. Build them from apps, files, websites, keyboard shortcuts, AppleScript, or Apple Shortcuts, and chain anything together in a visual macro builder. 300,000+ icons, or bring your own. One button, more than one move Tap for one thing, double-tap for another, hold for a third. Or hold to pop open a whole submenu of buttons from a single tile. One button can run your whole flow. Buttons you can feel Every press lands with a real mechanical click and a tactile thump. Pick the feel, from a crisp keyboard to a soft, heavy thock, with sound and haptics you tune separately. Your Mac's clipboard, on your phone Everything you copy on your Mac lands in a searchable history on your phone. Pin what you reuse, see when you copied it, and send any snippet back to your Mac with a tap. Images come through full-size. Every workflow its own look A teal gradient and big icons for your DAW. A tight grid with greyscale icons for your code editor. Pick from the community gallery or design your own. Buttons that already know A red mic pill on your Zoom button when you're muted. A live waveform on Spotify when it's playing. You stop checking your Mac, because the buttons already know. Keep your favorites close Pin the decks you live in and they stay a swipe away, whatever app you're in. Trackpad gestures you know Two fingers down to minimize, two up to maximize, three across to switch spaces. Or bind any swipe to almost anything: Apple Shortcuts, AppleScript, macros, jumping decks. Touch Bar, reborn Apple's Touch Bar is gone. DeckPilot brings it back as a floating glass strip on your phone. Volume, brightness, media, mic mute, a clock, and live Battery, CPU, and Memory readouts, colored to match each deck. Widgets on every screen Home Screen widgets put your top buttons one tap from anywhere. The Lock Screen widget shows your active deck without unlocking, and joins iOS 17+ StandBy on a charger. On your wrist, too A dedicated Apple Watch deck with multiple pages and real app icons. Digital Crown for volume and brightness. Complications for one-tap Mute and Play/Pause. Built-in MIDI for any DAW Faders, knobs, XY pads, velocity pads, and transport for Logic Pro, GarageBand, Ableton Live, FL Studio, and anything that speaks MIDI. Also good - Built-in AppleScript editor with ten dark themes - Auto-lock and OLED-safe auto-dim after a short idle - Share .deckpacks, browse community templates, try Demo Mode without pairing - Privacy-first. Commands stay on your Wi-Fi, nothing leaves your network Made for developers, designers, streamers, and musicians who want a faster way to drive their Mac. To unlock the full kit, DeckPilot offers an optional Pro subscription. Pro: $7.99/month or $39/year, auto-renewable. Lifetime: $79 one-time. Pro adds multi-page decks, larger grids, MIDI, macros, AppleScript, app-aware switching, multi-launch buttons, advanced gestures, Apple Watch, per-deck themes, and Shortcuts. Payment is charged to your Apple ID at confirmation. Subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your App Store account settings. Terms: https://deckpilot.co/terms Privacy: https://deckpilot.co/privacy Support: https://deckpilot.co/support
Relay Shortcut Trigger
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Relay turns a spare iPhone or iPad into a hands-free Shortcuts trigger. Run any Shortcut on a repeating interval or at specific times of day, or fire it from another device on your Wi-Fi with a simple, token-protected local web request. No subscription. No account. No cloud. Everything runs on your device and your local network. WHY RELAY Some automations only work when a device actively opens an app or runs a Shortcut — showing a camera dashboard every few minutes, rotating a status display, kicking off a sync, opening a kiosk app on a timer. iOS only allows an app to launch Shortcuts while it is in the foreground, so Relay is built to be exactly that: a reliable foreground scheduler you leave running on a dedicated device. SCHEDULER • Unlimited rules, each with its own Shortcut, interval (from 1 minute) or list of exact times • Optional active window per rule (e.g. only 8:00–17:00), overnight windows supported • Wall-clock scheduling: if a fire time passes while the schedule was paused, Relay catches up the moment it becomes active again • Live countdown to the next trigger, per rule and overall LOCAL NETWORK TRIGGER • Built-in HTTP endpoint on your Wi-Fi: GET /run?shortcut=Name — from a laptop, home server, Raspberry Pi, or any browser • Token-protected (query token or Bearer header), with one-tap token generation • Bonjour advertising (_relay._tcp) so other devices find the phone even when its IP changes • /health and /next endpoints for monitoring and scripting, plus a built-in status web page • Foreground-only and LAN-only by design — nothing is ever exposed to the internet KIOSK ESSENTIALS • Keep-awake (never lets the screen sleep) while active • Stall detection: if another app kept focus and the loop stopped, Relay shows a one-tap resume banner and can notify you • Battery level and charging state on screen, with Guided Access guidance for true kiosk setups • Live event log of every trigger, request, and state change EXTRAS • Home-screen widget with the next trigger and last run • Live Activity countdown in the Dynamic Island while the schedule runs • Diagnostics page: foreground state, listener state, address, recent triggers • Step-by-step onboarding that builds your first automation loop with you Relay is 100% free — every feature, forever. It runs the Shortcuts you created, and it never collects any data.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Relay Shortcut Trigger at none against DeckPilot's 3. On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. DeckPilot sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $7.99 per month. Relay Shortcut Trigger asks for nothing beyond the download.
| Parameter | DeckPilot | Relay Shortcut Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (6 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 6 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 2 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Keshav Kewlani | All Things AI, Inc |
In-app purchases
DeckPilot
- DeckPilot Pro$7.991 Month
- DeckPilot Pro$39.001 Year
- Founding Member$79.00
Relay Shortcut Trigger
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is DeckPilot free?
Is Relay Shortcut Trigger free?
Do DeckPilot or Relay Shortcut Trigger have ads?
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