Demo: iPhone as trackpad on macOS | Hacker News Reader

Demo: iPhone as trackpad on macOS

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89 pointstosh27 comments

One of the first apps I ever downloaded on my iPhone was WeBe Bluetooth Mouse/Keyboard [0] back in 2010. Judging by the reviews it no longer works, so El Trackpad is in a good place!

[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/webe-bluetooth-mouse-keyboard/...

sooo... like KDE Connect[0]?

I remember when I discovered on linux, and that was my first application I installed on my new windows pc.

[0] https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

Slick! Great job. This reminds me of my ideal dream setup.

You can spend a down payment of a house on a brand new Mac Book Pro, and the second you plugin a second monitor or "Sidecar" to an iPad screen the fan will go insane with all your Electron apps open. Basically unusable for day-to-day use or annoying.

What I really want is in the territory of this demo. Let me just "Maincar" from my iPad (or even iPhone) into a decked out MBP / Mac Mini sitting somewhere in my house in a cool spot where it can be as loud as it needs to be.

The speed of Sidecar is incredible - so I imagine this will work. This way people can stop dealing with MBP hardware and have a slim quiet quasi-touch setup with the beautiful iPad Pro/iPad Magic Keyboard.

At that point why wouldn't you get a Mac desktop to put somewhere else in your house, with (I assume) a better price for the performance and better cooling?

I would prefer this setup for just being mobile. Using the zen simplicity iPad apps in most cases.

Then, I like the idea of tapping into a MBP or Mini for the extra power when you need it like coding.

For the Mac Mini idea specifically, I'd go as far as lugging it around with me in my backpack if it had more juice than a MBP and a battery.

Is this wired only? For example kdeconnect just uses wifi for that.

I agree. I use a five year old Mac Mini and Cinema Display to watch DVDs. If I could use my iPhone as remote over Bluetooth or Wifi, then that would be something.

Maybe iOS is just too complicated to hack elegantly?

I could do this on my Android phone since Froyo

You could do it to your Mac and use the exact same multi touch gestures as the trackpad?

Turns out there are apps that support multi touch gestures on a lot of OS. [1]

[1] https://www.remotemouse.net/

I dont own a mac. But it supported pretty much anything my laptop let me do

https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2156808

Gestures: * Tap-to-click * Two finger tap for right click * Two finger scroll * Pinch to zoom * Three finger drag & drop or highlight * Four finger swipe down to show desktop * Four finger swipe up to maximise current window * Four finger swipe sideways to change current window focus * Left handed mouse support (swap left and right mouse click)

Just as I thought, they aren’t the MacOS gestures just common gestures. Word lookup, show desktop, show launchpad, mission control, app expose, and swipe between pages.

Could you provide a link to what you're using, this sounds great

I could do this on my Openmoko Neo Freerunner in 2008 - ReMoko implemented that via standard Bluetooth HID ;)

https://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/ReMoko

also kde connect

Funny, I'm using an old iPhone 5s for music, podcast or audio book--no mobile chip, just Wifi. I can also take calls from my new iPhone (2020 SE). It's a whole new life for this 5+ yro fone.

Just two days ago I was watching a DVD on MacMini + CinemaDisplay wishing for an App to make my wired headphones 'wireless'. This trackpad hack could use some wireless connectivity, too.

Super useful for me today as I'm working for the next week without my usual creature comforts of my at-home desk. However I haven't quite figured out how to do click-and-drag selections yet.

This does seem very handy for those that want to travel light with their laptop but use an external trackpad too. Curious how well the actual gestures/tracking matches up to the real deal.

Also interesting for Mac mini and iMac

Magic Trackpad is $129

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJ2R2LL/A/magic-trackpad-...

Has anyone done a latency test?

A Macbook shell that takes an iPhone where the trackpad would go could be nice, hardware wise there won't be much difference anymore. Some companies tried similar things in the past like Razr, but they have an audience that doesn't care. Coming from Apple it could work.

This seems like a solution looking for a problem.

Are people not allowed to do projects for fun anymore? Why does every single project need to solve a problem?

Or a developer looking for a fun project and making it available to anyone else who happens to want it :)

The problem is the magic trackpad costs $129 and you presumably already own multitouch hardware that can do the job. Why buy two of the same thing? It's bad for the environment.

This seems mis-leading. It's not "iPhone as Magic Trackpad". If it was it would not require software to be installed on the Mac. As it is it requires software on the Mac so arguably by definition, it's not a "Magic Trackpad"

Maybe that's a minor point but, every piece of software i install is one more vector for exploits., one more piece of software to maintain with updates, one more piece of software that stops working with OS updates where as an actual Magic Trackpad just works.

If that's what you want, there are apps on android that emulate an HID profile bluetooth device. It does not rely on software running on the computer.

The receiver device must have Bluetooth 4.0 and:

Android 4.4 or higher, Apple iOS 9 or higher (only Keyboard supported), Windows 8 or higher, Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 or higher or Chromebook Chrome OS

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.appground.b...

I agree, the wording in the tweet is a bit misleading, I rephrased the title on hn, ty

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