All of the following is shipping and verified on real devices. The result always depends on your tablet’s panel and its hardware video decoder.
We take as much of your panel as it can give.
The tablet’s real HEVC decode rates are measured and the refresh ladder is built from them — up to the highest step the panel supports.
Dark gradients come through without banding. As far as your panel goes: true HDR10 or compatible HLG.
The stream is built around whatever resolution your tablet can decode, and the display appears at that size on the Mac.
The picture is encoded on the Mac’s video hardware — it leaves the CPU alone and goes easy on battery.
On devices without a hardware HEVC decoder, the stream is set up with AVC (H.264) automatically.
On the first connection the smoothest stream settings for your device are measured and saved to that tablet — you never have to touch them.
Turn the tablet and the stream rotates to portrait without dropping. Ideal for long documents and code. Details: how the tablet becomes a Mac display.
You really drive the Mac from the tablet.
Spaces, Mission Control and App Exposé move with your fingers, and you can back out mid-gesture. Works on a folio touchpad and with three fingers on the touchscreen.
Keys from external and folio keyboards map straight onto the Mac — including the Windows key and folio special keys.
It opens by itself when you tap a text field on the Mac and closes when focus leaves. Keycaps are drawn from the Mac’s active layout and keyboard type (ANSI/ISO/JIS).
A tap clicks where you touched; dragging, scrolling and long-press all find their counterpart on the Mac.
A gamepad connected to the tablet drives the Mac — rumble included. With no controller plugged in, no virtual one shows up on the Mac.
The pointer follows the pen while it hovers; pressure, tilt, eraser tip and barrel button (right click) all work. Palm rejection lets you rest your hand on the glass. Details: working with a pen.
Relative mouse movement behaves correctly in games, and when the Mac hides the cursor it is hidden on the tablet too.
Cable, Wi-Fi or from away — all inside the same app.
It connects over AOA (Android Open Accessory): no Developer Options to turn on, no ADB to install. The cable charges the tablet at the same time.
A Mac on the same network is found by itself. For the smoothest result, put the Mac on Ethernet and both sides on a Wi-Fi 6 network.
It also connects while the tablet is on mobile data or another network. Traffic flows through your own Tailscale account’s end-to-end encrypted tunnel; you add the tablet once while at home. Details: how remote access works.
If you would rather the cable only charged, you set that per device — the stream keeps coming over Wi-Fi.
More than one tablet attaches to the same Mac — wired and wireless can be mixed, and each one is an independent display.
If Wi-Fi stalls for a moment the display is parked; when the tablet is back within a few seconds your windows stay where they were.
The situations you actually hit at the desk.
The tablet is presented to macOS as a virtual display, so it stays outside the external monitor limit. It becomes an extra screen even with a monitor already plugged in. Details: how the tablet becomes a Mac display.
Each tablet appears as its own output device in macOS; send audio there and set the level from the tablet as well. Details: how audio reaches the tablet.
The stream keeps running; wake it from the tablet and carry on. Ideal for a Mac mini or Studio with no monitor.
Pin the tablet to the stream while it runs — one click from the Mac as you step away.
Resolution, display arrangement, HDR and calibration values stay bound to that tablet; the same setup comes back next time you connect.
The link holds even when you switch to another app on the tablet, and on devices that support it the stream drops into a small window (PiP).
The picture stays between your two devices.
No account, no analytics, no ads, no tracking SDK. The details are in the privacy policy.
The Mac app was scanned by Apple for malicious software and no malicious content was found.
When you connect from away, traffic flows through your own Tailscale account’s end-to-end encrypted tunnel, straight between your devices.
Install the Mac app and the tablet app, plug in the cable — free during the open test.
