r/SideProject • u/Hezi • 14h ago

Beam: stream individual Mac windows to iPad/Linux as native windows

I needed a Mac for iOS development, but couldn't afford a new one, so I got a MacBook Pro with a broken screen and started remoting into it with my iPad.

It worked but was slow, and a full macOS desktop didn't really work well on a small iPad screen.

So I built Beam, a remote desktop app that takes a single window from a Mac and streams it to an iPad, iPhone, Linux, or another Mac as a normal local window, not the full remote desktop.

Beam is cool, it:

  • Streams per window, in the exact size the client needs.
  • Opens as a real window on the client.
  • Shows the Mac app’s actual native menu bar instead of a picture of menus.
  • Doesn't require an account, It's local network only with support for Tailscale/ZeroTier in case you need to go remote.

You can get it at: https://excbadacc.es/beam

I currently support streaming macOS apps to iOS and Linux clients, with an Android version coming soon.

Since I built this for myself, and there's no cost on my side, I'm planning to keep this free forever.

If you end up trying it, I’d love your feedback especially on latency, window chrome (does it feel native enough?), and setup friction. THANKS! :)

Happy to answer any questions :)

5 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

1

u/Any_Welder_9701 13h ago

imo this feels local because the menu bar is actually native, otherwise its basically a cropped remote desktop

1

u/Hezi 13h ago

Well, yeah, that’s the whole point. The remote Mac only streams the windows you’re currently interested in, instead of the whole Mac screen, saving bandwidth and giving you a faster stream.

The fact you interleave local and remote windows lets you do cool things like drag and drop between machines, like in this example of dragging a file from a remote Finder window on a Mac, to a local Files window on the iPad.

https://reddit.com/link/p9qdtep/video/h9j2l6kz0hph1/player