Headroom vs Sill

Headroom is a remote desktop for controlling a Mac from your iPad, iPhone, or another Mac. The big idea: nothing to install on the Mac. Turn on macOS's built-in Screen Sharing — that's the whole setup. WHEN YOU WANT IT • Drive the Mac in the next room from the couch • Manage a headless Mac mini — no monitor, no keyboard • Peek at your dev machine or build server from wherever you are • Reach your home Mac from anywhere over a VPN such as Tailscale WHY HEADROOM • Zero install on the Mac Connects straight to macOS's built-in Screen Sharing (VNC). No server app, no agent, no menu-bar daemon. • Finds your Macs automatically Macs on the same Wi-Fi appear instantly via Bonjour. Manual IP connections work too. • Fast, smooth screen Metal rendering plus ZRLE compression — feels real-time on a LAN and stays usable on thin connections. • Touch that makes sense on iPad and iPhone Tap to click, one-finger scroll, long-press to drag and select text, two-finger wheel scrolling, pinch to zoom. • Real mouse behavior on the Mac On a Mac (same app), clicks, drags, and right-clicks pass through 1:1. Option-scroll pans; Command-scroll zooms. • Full keyboard, and your voice Software and hardware keyboards both work. Modifier keys (⌘⌥⌃⇧) tap once for the next keystroke or double-tap to lock — every shortcut is reachable. Tap the mic on the keyboard and what you say is typed straight into the Mac. • Private by design Credentials live only in your device's Keychain, and passwords are encrypted in transit using Apple's standard Screen Sharing authentication. • Made for iPhone Duo Half open like a laptop, your Mac sits on the upper screen and the keyboard on the lower one. Fully open or held like a book, the Mac spans the inner screen; closed, the outer screen works on its own. Nothing is drawn across the fold. CONNECTED IN THREE STEPS 1. On the Mac: System Settings > General > Sharing > turn on Screen Sharing 2. Open Headroom — your Macs appear automatically 3. Sign in with the Mac's username and password. Done. HEADROOM PRO • Unlimited connection time • Every future Pro feature included REQUIREMENTS • Client: iPad / iPhone (iOS 17+, verified on iOS 27 and iPadOS 27), Apple Silicon Mac • Host: any Mac with Screen Sharing enabled (no extra software) • Same network; for internet access we recommend a VPN such as Tailscale — Headroom is built by MusicFlow ("music × engineering") — the tool we made to run our own headless Mac minis, polished into something we use every day.

Sill shows a window from your Mac, or its whole desktop, on your iPhone or iPad, and lets you use it with touch, a keyboard, a touchscreen trackpad or Apple Pencil. It streams straight from your Mac to your device over your own network, so there is no account to create and no server in between. You pair each device once, and every connection is encrypted. Both parts are free: the Sill app for iPhone and iPad, and Sill for Mac. Streaming: * Any single Mac window, or the whole Desktop, on your iPhone or iPad * Hardware HEVC video, up to 120 fps on ProMotion screens (60 elsewhere); the rate follows each device * Seven bitrate quality presets, from Low (4 Mbps) to Extreme (150 Mbps), plus Resolution, a frame-rate limit and Prioritize Encoding Speed * Text size (Aa): resizes your Mac window to fit your screen, so text is the size you want * Optional virtual display: a window streams from its own HiDPI display, sized to your device, and keeps updating even when covered on your Mac; full-screen video works too Controls: * Touch: tap to click, drag to scroll with momentum, touch and hold to right-click * Apple Pencil as the mouse, with hover * Software and hardware keyboards, with ⌘, ⌃ and ⌥ shortcuts, plus a key row with latching modifiers and a Spotlight key * Laptop layout when you hold the device upright: the picture on top, a key row and a trackpad (two-finger scroll, two-finger tap, hold then drag, three-finger gestures for Mission Control, App Exposé, switching Spaces, Apps and Show Desktop) * Dedicated iPhone and iPad layouts * Each Mac app's menus (File, Edit, View, etc) on your device, behind a Menus button * Window thumbnails: switch with a tap; hold one for close, minimize and full screen; drag to reorder * An Apps drawer: open windows and all installed apps, with search, and it launches apps Connecting: * Finds your Mac automatically; each Mac has 4 modes: Wired, Wi-Fi, Direct or Remote * USB cable (Wired) support, and a live session moves between the cable and Wi-Fi without dropping * Direct Wireless Connection (Direct, optional), for when you and your Mac don't share a network * Remote Access from anywhere through your own VPN, such as Tailscale, or a port forward * Pairing: every connection encrypted with TLS 1.3; pair each device once by QR code or a 12-digit code, and a USB cable pairs by itself; Require pairing is on by default * Your Mac keeps its keys in the protected part of its keychain that only Sill can read Sill for Mac: * A ~6 MB menu bar app with a live status card: each device, its frame rate and latency * Settings: General, Devices, Streaming, Virtual Display, Remote Access and Permissions * Launch at Login, a log window, and an update check that tells you when a new version is out * A notarized disk image download from getsill.app Sill for iPhone and iPad: * A Settings panel that changes your Mac's stream settings, and shows the connection and latency * A first-run tour, and Take the Tour to replay it * Tells you when your Mac or the device needs an update Free and open source (Apache 2.0) No account, no servers, no tracking: video goes straight from your Mac to your device, forever! Website: https://getsill.app/ GitHub: https://github.com/Saffsanity/sill Site GitHub: https://github.com/Saffsanity/sill-site