iPhone → Mac
Your thumb already
knows how to
do this.
Trackpal turns the phone in your pocket into a trackpad for your Mac. Put it flat on the desk and move the cursor.
Free. macOS 13 or later.
Setup takes about a minute.
Move your pointer in here Drag your finger here
in this browser — Trackpal, on device 120 Hz
- Touch capture
- 120Hz
- Cursor updates sent
- 125/s
- Measured over USB
- 1.3ms
Every touch sample the screen produces, de-batched rather than averaged.
Motion goes over UDP, on its own receive queue, paced to the display clock.
Finger to cursor, with no interpolation smoothing the gap. Wi-Fi adds the radio's own latency.
Everything a trackpad does
The gestures are the ones your hands already run without thinking. Nothing here needs learning.
- Move
- One finger anywhere on the glass moves the cursor.
- Tap
- Tap to click. Tap a corner to right-click — you pick which corner, and how big it is.
- Scroll
- Two fingers scroll, and keep coasting after you let go. Natural direction is a setting.
- Select text
- Double-tap and drag, the same way you would on a real trackpad.
Two halves, one pairing code
The Mac app runs in the menu bar and shows a code. Type that code into the phone once, and the two find each other on their own after that.
Same network
The phone finds your Mac by name over Bonjour. Nothing to configure, no addresses to type.
Cable
Plug the phone in and it works over the cable — faster, and immune to the client isolation that shared Wi-Fi networks tend to switch on.