Pocket PointerRelease notes
Every published version of the Mac helper, newest first. An installed copy offers these to you on its own — Check for Updates… in the menu bar item asks now instead of waiting.
1.4.6
- Two fingers scroll the Mac from the live screen view. A long page can be read from the phone without leaving the picture for the trackpad. The wheel turns where the pointer already is, exactly as it does on a trackpad, so scrolling never drags the Mac's cursor somewhere nobody asked it to go — a tap is how you aim it.
- Disconnecting no longer means quitting the app. After you disconnected from a Mac — or after the Mac closed the socket on its own while the phone sat in the background — the phone held on to a session that was already over, and every later tap on that Mac was refused in silence. It now notices the connection has ended and is ready for the next one.
- The app in front shows up the moment you connect. The Mac used to report it a fraction too early, before the phone could take it in, so the bar opened on an empty placeholder and stayed there until something on the Mac happened to change apps. That is why clicking a window appeared to fix it.
- The controls unfold from the app icon that opens them, and slide rather than blink into place. The icon is sent at the size the phone actually draws it, so it is sharp, and it answers a press instead of sitting still for the 0.4 seconds before the app switcher arrives.
- Touching the screen view closes the controls, rather than leaving them parked over the Mac's menu bar until one of their own buttons is pressed. The touch still lands.
1.4.5
- A phone this Mac had forgotten can pair again. Pairing a second time, or reinstalling the helper, could leave the phone holding a key the Mac no longer had. It retried that key for as long as you let it, showing a network error each time. The phone now notices it has been refused, drops the dead key and offers to pair again — and there is a Forget This Mac on every Mac in the list for the times you would rather not wait.
- The phone keeps control while a dialog is up on the Mac. Choosing Check for Updates… used to freeze the pointer until the alert was dismissed, and only the Mac's own trackpad could dismiss it — the one thing you do not have when you are running a slide deck from the back of the room. Any system dialog did the same.
- The menu bar symbol drops its motion lines as soon as the phone lets go, rather than waiting to be clicked.
1.4.4
- One place to allow Pocket Pointer to control your Mac. Moving the pointer and reading another app's menus are separate permissions, and the menu bar item used to ask for them separately — two buttons, two trips to the same pane in System Settings. They are one request now, and one switch answers both.
1.4.3
- Drive the Mac from a live view of its screen. The phone shows what the Mac is showing and you point at it directly, rather than steering a cursor you cannot see.
- The phone's keyboard behaves like a keyboard. Modifiers hold, keys repeat, and backspace still reaches the Mac when the phone has nothing left of its own to delete.
- A reworked top bar: the controls move to the top right while you are typing, and the trackpad turns with the phone.
- Leaving the app for another one no longer reads as a dropped connection.
- The app pill at the top of the trackpad reads as a single button to VoiceOver instead of two unlabelled images.
1.4.2
- Present with a laser pointer. The Mac draws a glow over the cursor while you are pointing at something, so a room can follow it on a projector.
- See the Mac's displays on the phone. The trackpad shows a live view of what the Mac is showing; tap a display to send the pointer there.
- Drive the menu bar and switch apps from the phone, without reaching for the Mac.
- The pointer now reaches every corner of every display, including screens arranged above or below the main one.
1.4.2
- Quitting the helper now tells the phone, instead of leaving it waiting for a Mac that has gone.
1.4.1
- Stopped offering a permission prompt that macOS will never show again — once a grant is denied, the menu points at System Settings instead.
- The download page serves the current app icon.
1.4.0
- The app is now called Pocket Pointer, spelled in full everywhere you read it — in the menu bar, in Accessibility, and on this site.
1.3.0
- The iPhone app says when a newer version is on the App Store, rather than leaving an old build talking to a newer helper.
- Support and privacy pages, linked from every page of the site.
1.2.1
- A redrawn app icon with a dark appearance and a glass layer.
1.2.0
- Settings are remembered across launches. Tap to click arrives switched on, linear pointer switched off.
- A two-finger tap right-clicks however the fingers leave the glass.
- The Open at Login switch follows the real login item, including changes made outside the app.
- The phone can say when the Mac is not allowed to move the cursor, instead of looking connected but dead.
1.1.0
- Pairing uses a six-digit code shown on the Mac and typed on the iPhone. Pairing stays open until it is paired, spent, or stopped.
- Rename a trusted iPhone from the Mac.
- The Mac tells the phone when it ends a session, and introduces the iPhone by its model.
- The disk image opens to a proper install window.
- Updates install themselves. The helper checks this feed and updates in place — the last version you have to download by hand.
Every release here is signed with the same Developer ID and notarized by Apple before it is published, and the update feed is signed on top of that. Details are on the download page.