Mande Companion for Mac

Choose Pair an iPad in the menu bar. The Mac shows a QR code and a short code. Scan it, type it, or open a mande-pair link on your iPad. The code is good for one use, and stays open for five minutes.

Your Mac then appears in Mande with its key already trusted. There is nothing else to set up.

• Nearby, on any Wi-Fi. Mande Companion links over peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, the radio AirDrop uses, even on hotel and office networks that keep devices apart.
• At home on your own network.
• Over your VPN.
• From anywhere, through the Companion. For the hardest networks there is an optional relay: Mande Relay from the App Store, or your own on Cloudflare. A relay only ever carries encrypted traffic.

A glass panel in your menu bar shows your live sessions, how your Mac can be reached, and recent activity. The menu-bar mark fills in while an iPad is connected.

Only the iPads you paired can connect, and all they can reach is Screen Sharing on that Mac. macOS still asks for your account's name and password.

Everything in the panel is one command away. Every command takes --json for scripts.

$ mande status      # sessions and addresses
$ mande pair        # open pairing and show the QR code here
$ mande devices     # list paired iPads
$ mande remove NAME # unpair an iPad
$ mande logs -f     # follow connection events
$ mande doctor      # check how an iPad can reach this Mac

mande install links the tool into ~/.local/bin.