---
title: The iPhone companion
description: Pair the Termio iOS app with a machine over a QR code and check in on a running agent from your phone — connecting only to machines you own, never through a relay of ours.
---

Termio for iPhone is a companion, not a separate service. It connects to
machines you own — your Mac, or a box that Mac set up — over your local network
or a tunnel you configure. There’s no relay of ours in between.

## Pairing

1. On your Mac, open **Settings ▸ Mobile** and pick the machine your iPhone
   should connect to. Each one serves its own sessions.
2. Press **Publish** for a machine that isn’t reachable yet, then scan the QR
   code from the iOS app: tap the machine pill ▸ **Scan QR Code**. The camera
   reads the code on-device; nothing is stored or transmitted.

Once paired, the phone reaches that machine’s sessions whenever it can dial the
address it was paired against. **Rotate Token…** signs out every paired iPhone
and requires a fresh scan — that’s the revoke.

A phone can attach straight to a machine that isn’t this Mac, over the same
session protocol the Mac uses. Your laptop doesn’t have to be awake to stand in
the middle.

<DocsImage
  src="/screenshots/docs/19-pair-iphone.png"
  alt="Termio Mobile settings on the Mac with Mobile Access enabled and a pairing QR code ready for an iPhone"
  width={1664}
  height={1288}
/>

## What you can do from the phone

- **See your projects and sessions**, with the same live statuses as on the Mac.
  Home is one workspace at a time — swipe from the left edge for the workspace
  rail, the way Slack switches — and each section names the machine its
  workspace is on. The “Needs You” strip stays outside that scope on purpose, so
  an agent blocked in another workspace still reaches you.
- **Type straight into a session.** The phone drives the real terminal — you’re
  typing into the agent exactly as on the desktop, with a key-bar for scrollback
  and jump keys, and hold-to-talk voice dictation if you enable it.
- **Preview files** read-only over the same connection.

<DocsMediaGrid>
  <DocsImage
    src="/screenshots/docs/20-iphone-sessions.png"
    alt="Termio on iPhone showing several projects, agent sessions, and their live status indicators"
    width={1206}
    height={2622}
    variant="phone"
  />
  <DocsImage
    src="/screenshots/docs/27-iphone-terminal.png"
    alt="A Termio iPhone terminal showing git history with the terminal key bar and software keyboard"
    width={1206}
    height={2622}
    variant="phone"
  />
</DocsMediaGrid>

<DocsImage
  src="/screenshots/docs/28-iphone-file-preview.png"
  alt="Termio on iPhone showing a read-only syntax-highlighted Swift file preview with file metadata"
  width={1206}
  height={2622}
  variant="phone"
/>

## Reaching a machine remotely

On the same Wi-Fi, pairing is all you need. To reach a machine from anywhere,
give it an address: **Settings ▸ Mobile ▸ Tunnel** starts one for you, or
**Custom** runs the tunnel command you choose — a named `cloudflared` tunnel, or
your own relay — and matches the URL it prints. Termio never routes your traffic
through servers of ours; a hosted tunnel provider terminates on theirs, which is
why Custom is there.

<Callout type="warning">
  A Mac that’s asleep can’t answer the phone, and nothing in the app can wake it
  from outside. If you want a session you can always reach, run it on a machine
  that stays up — a VPS, or the Mac mini on the desk — and pair against that.
</Callout>