Use your iPad as a display for the Mac you left at home

How it works

Tailscale joins your devices into one private network, wherever they are. Kite sends the picture from the Mac to the iPad over that network, directly between your two devices when Tailscale can. There's no Kite server in between, and Kite doesn't ask you to create an account.

Before you leave home

1. Install Tailscale on both devices

   Get Tailscale for the Mac and the iPad and sign in to the same Tailscale account on both. It's free for personal use.

2. Connect once at home

   Open Kite on the Mac and on the iPad, pick your Mac and click Allow on the Mac. The iPad remembers this Mac, so away from home it stays in the list and connects with one tap.

3. Keep the Mac awake

   If the Mac goes fully to sleep, nothing can reach it. On a Mac mini, iMac or Mac Studio, turn on Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off in System Settings › Energy. A sleeping display is fine: the iPad shows a Wake Mac button.

4. Open Kite at login

   Turn on Open at Login in Kite's menu on the Mac, so Kite is running again after a restart.

Away from home

Turn on Tailscale on the iPad, open Kite and tap your Mac. If the Mac is locked, Kite shows a password field on the iPad so you can unlock it. Turn on Mac Sound in the three-finger menu to hear the Mac through the iPad.

What to expect

• The delay depends on both networks, mostly on the upload speed at home. The live delay is shown on the iPad (turn on Show delay and frame rate at the top in the three-finger menu), so you can see when the network is the problem.
• On a slow connection, set Quality to Light from the gear on the connect screen. Kite also lowers the bitrate on its own when the connection can't keep up.
• We've measured 25 ms on home Wi-Fi. We haven't published numbers for connections away from home yet, because they vary too much from place to place.