Remote HD

Gesture Pad on iPhone and iPod Touch

One of the coolest features introduced in iOS 4.0 was the native gesture support. The new Gesture Pad in Remote HD (running on iOS 4.0 or newer) uses the native gestures supported by the iOS allowing you to control your computer using swipes. The Gesture Pad supports swipes for navigation, tap for selection, two finger tap for menu operation and two finger swipes for transport operations like previous, play/pause or next when controlling iTunes or back, refresh or forward when controlling a web browser. Control your computer without looking at the touch screen is finally possible.

Trackpad enhancements

Gesture support have also been added to the trackpad. The trackpad now supports zoom by pinching (if enabled on the Mac from System Preferences > Universal Access > Zoom) and tap tap drag gestures to enable dragging. The new trackpad also supports standard three and four finger swipe gestures to navigate, switch applications and support exposé.

AirPlay support

The previous version of Remote HD introduced audio streaming from your Mac. This update takes it even further by allowing you to stream audio from your Mac to your iOS device, to an AirPlay compatible device like the new AppleTV around you; even if your Mac is located across the internet!

Remote Control support

You can now use remote control buttons on your headphones or a remote control paired with a universal dock to control playback on your remote computer.

Push Notifications

Thanks to Apple for the new push notification services, you can now receive free SMS like events on your iOS device. Remote HD now lets you know if someone has logged on to your machine (or machines) while you were away. If you have enabled access over the internet, these notifications will also allow you to instantly connect to your computer over the internet and see what the logged in user is doing.

Retina display optimized graphics and Remote View

Every button, every image used in Remote HD is now retina display optimized. Even the Remote View fully supports the new retina display found on iPhone 4 and the new iPod touch. The results are spectacular.

Fast user switching support

Remote Helper on your Mac now lets you access your computer even if some other user has taken over your computer! You can use Remote HD to switch back to your account.

Orientation Lock

Due to popular demand, we added a software orientation lock in Remote HD. With this setting enabled, you can now lock Remote HD's orientation in the middle of your session. A very useful feature when controlling a presentation using Remote HD.

Mutlitasking support

With the new multitasking support in iOS 4, you can now stream audio from your computer while Remote HD running in the background. You can even use a remote attached to your iOS device to control the playback on your computer in this mode.

Remote View - your LIVE desktop on your device

One of Remote HD's major features is the Remote view. Tap on the monitor button located at the top-right side of the remote to bring your LIVE desktop into view, complete with pinching, zooming, left and right-clicks, drag and drop, 3-finger window scrolling and easy access to the keyboard should you ever need to type on the connected computer.

Remote HD will deliver to your iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch a constant stream of screen data to show you exactly what's happening on the remote computer while you're controlling it. You'll be surprised by the response time and refresh rate - it will even beat most of your regular desktop VNC programs!

Remote View - it's our favorite, and you'll find there's nothing you can't get done on your computer - we promise!

Sending mouse clicks - tap to click, secondary tap to right click

Tapping anywhere in the Remote View will send a regular mouse-click, so you can operate quickly when you're zoomed in with a clear view of what you're clicking on. You can also double tap to send double clicks. And to send right-clicks, touch the screen with one finger and tap with a second finger.

Drag and drop - tap and hold to drag

Drag and drop is a very powerful feature of the new Remote View. It allows you to drag and drop files, move windows, highlight text and more. To integrate this naturally with the iPad/iPhone's built in multitouch zoom gesture was a huge challenge. And after many iterations, we finally got it right.

Let's say that you want to drag and drop a file. Here is how you would do it:

1. Start by zooming into the Remote View so that you can clearly see the file and can easily tap on it.
2. To start dragging, touch and hold the file for half a second. Be careful not to slide your finger.
3. This will make the file stick to your finger. Now moving your finger around will drag the file around.
4. Letting go of the touch will let go and drop the file.

Scrolling windows - 3 fingers to scroll

To scroll windows, touch the screen with three fingers, one by one without sliding any of your fingers yet. Now sliding all your fingers up and down will allow your to scroll windows on your computer.

"Apple-style" remote control

Remote HD's very first feature was the Apple-like remote control. You've seen this done time and time again but it was about time someone improved on this, so we did and now it's even better! You get your usual set of buttons found on the physical Apple-remote: up, down, left, right and OK along with the Menu-button. These will work as expected and in fact, they mimic the functionality of the actual Apple Remote.

But we felt a couple of things were missing, so here's what we added (and you'll love): a full-screen button handy for lots of applications (presentations, visualizations and - well, full-screen), a convenient volume slider and the Application Switcher is always just one tap away. Also, you'll see a strip of transport controls that change dynamically depending on the application in focus (be it a browser, music player, video player, presentation application or TV). This prevents cluttering the interface with buttons irrelevant to what you're controlling.

Record it!

In the effort of integrating Remote HD with applications that record streaming video, audio or live TV, you'll find a record button as part of the Remote Control interface. It will like most things in Remote HD, show up only when necessary - namely when you focus a program on your computer that has a recording functionality.

Help is on the way!

Since Remote HD's interface for remote controlling programs is so versatile and dynamic, we realized that button hints would be helpful. If you ever need help with knowing what the buttons do, one tap on the Information-icon will label every button with it's respective function for the program currently running. It's built-in and works like a charm.

Volume control

Volume control is available everywhere within Remote HD, since it's such an important part of controlling your media playback. In most parts of Remote HD, you will notice an actual slider that accurately represents the current volume setting on your computer. In other places you can use the physical hard buttons on your device to turn the volume up and down, either for your device (if using streaming audio) or for the computer itself. Adjust the settings to your own preference! Also, here's a handy tip: when starting a movie or music, put your device away without disconnecting. It will go to sleep (the display turns off) but you'll still be able to use the hard buttons to control the computer volume without unlocking.

Extended Keyboard

Remote HD provides a heavily modded wireless keyboard for remote access. The new remote provides new additions like arrow keys, tab button, volume buttons and multimedia keys. And it supports all the international keyboard layouts available in your iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch.

Auto-discover computers outside your network

The auto-discovery of available connections is a big feature within connection management in Remote HD. With absolutely no effort on your part, you will see a list of computers that are located outside your WiFi-network, but you can still connect to them over the internet. Even if they have dynamic IP-numbers that change from day to day. Remote HD has you covered.

There are a few prerequisites for this to work of course. To see a computer over the internet, it must be running Remote Helper with the "Enable discovery over the internet" and "Automatically configure port forwarding" option selected. You must also have successfully connected to the computer at least once.

Connections management

Remote HD is intended to be your one-stop-shop for remotely accessing and controlling your computer. Computer's even Mac or Windows. This is why you are now able to manage your available connections. See available WiFi-connections of any Mac or Windows-computer nearby running Remote Helper; have Remote HD discover available connections over the internet; and create (or copy) connection information and save in a list of manual connections.

Power Options: log off, sleep, restart or shut down

Featuring extensive power options, Remote HD allows you to log off the active account, put the computer to sleep, restart it or even shut it down altogether. These options come in handy whether you want to conserve energy, protect your privacy or restart after performing system maintenance.

Wake up! Automatic Wake-on-LAN

Since you're able to put your computer to sleep, you're going to want to wake it up too! Remote HD fully supports Apple's Wake on Demand to wake up your computer. Unlike other remotes, Remote HD won't bother you with entering Mac addresses for this feature to work. No wired network required - Wake on Demand even works over WiFi. If you have a MobileMe subscription, you can even wake up your computer over the internet.

To enable Wake on Demand, we recommend reading the Wake on Demand article on Apple support website

Disturbing the peace with Wake-on-WAN

Wake-on-WAN essentially means waking up your sleeping computer even when you're using a mobile connection (meaning you're outside your local network using 3G, EDGE or GPRS). This sounds simple enough but beware: most internet routers will block this feature out of the box. If you do have a router that supports this option, or your router is able to run open source firmware like openwrt, ddwrt or the like, you will be able to have Remote HD wake your slumbering computer over the internet! Just make sure you configure port forwarding correctly to allow both TCP and UDP traffic on port 32700 from the internet to reach your computer.

Adaptive bandwidth usage

Even on your WiFi-network, available bandwidth and connection quality can change. To ensure smooth operation of Remote HD on your iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch, Remote Helper on the computer will detect the available bandwidth and make appropriate changes to data quality on the fly. This means reducing image quality while maintaining frame rates and ensuring your refresh rate and response time stays at an acceptable level given any limitations to bandwidth resources. When your connection quality improves, so will the data quality of Remote HD!

Data conservation mode on mobile networks

When you connect to your computer using the mobile network (3G, EDGE, GPRS), Remote HD kicks into a mode designed to save data transfer and optimize its performance based on the available bandwidth at any given time. Among the actions Remote HD takes to ensure proper performance is using using text-labels only (instead of text and icons) and using saved copies of frequently accessed information (such as applications-lists).

Access multiple user accounts on your Mac

You may have multiple accounts on your Mac, and thanks to our system design you can install Remote Helper separately for each user account. Multiple instances of Remote Helper can run in parallel, allowing you to connect to a particular user account. Remote Helper runs in user mode on your computer, meaning that no administrative privileges are required to run it (such privileges may still be needed during initial setup and automatic firewall configuration).

Visual Trackpad

Remote HD features a built-in trackpad. Much like the remote control, the trackpad has been done a million times before, so we made it better.

The Visual Trackpad is something else. Your fingers will leave glowing, fading traces of their motion, it supports multi-finger gestures and it has buttons for left, right and center click (tapping the trackpad itself also works). As always, the must-have Application Switcher is one tap away, and to ensure proper performance (even on older devices), you can play with the Settings-panel to decide how the trackpad works best on your device.

The trackpad now also supports sending right-clicks and drag-n-drop. To right-click, touch anywhere on the trackpad surface and tap with a secondary finger. To drag things, touch anywhere on the trackpad surface and hold your finger steady for half a second. This will enable dragging.

Application Switcher: switch and close running programs

Switch between running programs without any pointing around. Tapping the name of the current application brings up the Application Switcher. It shows you a list of running programs, much like when you cmd-tab on your Mac, with large icons and clear text labels. Scroll and tap to focus any running program - you can even close a running program by tapping the 'x' by every icon!

Spotlight Integration

A unique feature to Remote HD is Spotlight integration. Searching for files on your computer couldn't be easier since it's integrated right into Remote HD. There's no clicking around to get to it. Just type in your search term and tap to launch files directly from your search results. You won't find this in any other iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch application.

Launch any program

You have a handful of programs that you routinely use, and shortcuts to these are probably located in your Dock. There comes a time when you'll want to run an application that usually isn't accessible with a single click or a tap... but in Remote HD, every application is! By looking for programs installed on your computer (the Applications library), Remote HD will save you the digging through folders upon folders - you simply get a list of all the programs Remote HD finds on your computer. Just tap to run, that's all there is to it!

Complete redesign of the user interface

The user interface of Remote HD has been completely revamped, built and designed from the ground up - not a single pixel remains unchanged from the previous versions. We did rounds and rounds of design iterations to come up with a sleek interface with smooth animations, pixel-perfect icons and cool transitions.

VoiceOver

This time around, Remote HD was redesigned with VoiceOver in mind. We are proud to have designed an application which can be used by anyone. Every interface element contains correct accessibility labels. Dymaic buttons change their accesibility labels accordingly. Furthermore, any changes in the button layouts caused by switching applications are automatically announced to the user.

In-application settings

All the settings for Remote HD are accessible from within the application, instead of the Settings-panel in your device. This allows you to change every setting without interrupting your workflow or disconnecting the current session. There are settings to change the behavior of Remote HD, and also some settings to optimize the performance of certain features on older models of the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Auto Connect

If you use Remote HD mostly to connect to the same computer you can save the time of searching for available connections and tapping to connect. Go to the Settings within Remote HD and turn on Auto-Connect. This will cause Remote HD to automatically connect to the most recently accessed computer. It's just a little something to make things easier for you and save a bit of time.

Have it your way: expanding and customizing Remote HD

To top off everything, you can expand the functionality of Remote HD to control any application, just the way you'd want to! The interface at your disposal will be that of the "Apple-style" remote (in portrait mode) but even turning on the overlaid controls in Remote View will get your commands executed.

Here's how you'd go about customizing your very own controls: on a Mac, install and run Griffin Proxi alongside with Remote Helper. Now, if you press a button on the remote control and Remote HD doesn't know what to do (ie. it doesn't know any particular commands for the running application), it will check to see if Proxi is running in the background. Upon finding Proxi, Remote HD will pass on the information about the button click and that's where you can step in and have Proxi do almost anything you want!

Example of a Remote HD trigger in Proxi:

    Create a new AppleScript trigger using Insert Trigger > AppleScript
    AppleScript trigger name: RJ-UP
    Filter: Trigger if any, Value is 0
                        

Assign a task like KeyPress > Volume up to this trigger. Next, focus on an unsupported application and press the Up key in Remote HD. It should trigger Volume up.

Valid event names: RJ-UP, RJ-DOWN, RJ-LEFT, RJ-RIGHT, RJ-PLAY, RJ-MENU, RJ-FULLSCREEN, RJ-PLAYBACK, RJ-PREV, RJ-NEXT, RJ-VOLUME
Valid values: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 for events Up, Down, Hold, DoubleTap, Hold Release