Web access: this Mac's browser and your phone

Web access opens Picky as a web app: in a browser on this Mac, where a wide window shows the Pickle list beside the conversation, and on your phone, where you can check on Pickles and the Picky conversation, answer their questions, and send instructions while you are away. The phone adds the app to its Home Screen and reaches the Mac over a path you set up yourself (your Tailscale tailnet or your Cloudflare Tunnel); Picky runs no server of its own.

Web access is off until you turn it on. A paired device can do what the HUD can do on this Mac, including running shell commands, so pair only devices you own and revoke the ones you stop using.

Turn it on

1. Open Web access in the Hub sidebar and turn on Use web access. Picky starts a small server on 127.0.0.1:17640. It listens only on this Mac; remote access below carries a phone’s traffic to it.
2. Under This Mac, press Open in browser to open Picky in your default browser. A browser opening it this way for the first time is paired without a code and listed as This Mac under paired devices. Another browser can open the address shown there and pair with a code from Connect a device.
3. Under Remote access, choose how a phone reaches the Mac:
   • Off: only browsers on this Mac can open Picky.
   • Tailscale Serve: install Tailscale on the Mac and the phone and sign in to the same tailnet. Press Turn Serve on. The address is https://<this Mac's MagicDNS name>. Serve needs HTTPS certificates enabled for the tailnet; if they are off, the Tailscale CLI prints a link to the admin console, and the settings page shows that message. If you cannot enable them (for example on a company tailnet you do not administer), use Cloudflare Tunnel instead.
   • Cloudflare Tunnel, with one of two addresses:
     • Temporary address: Picky runs cloudflared (install it with brew install cloudflared) and shows the https://<words>.trycloudflare.com address it gets. No Cloudflare account is needed. The address changes whenever the tunnel opens again, including every time Picky restarts. A Home Screen app and its notifications belong to one address, so after a change pair the phone again, add the Home Screen app again from the new address, and turn notifications back on; the page says so when it happens. Cloudflare offers these tunnels for testing, without an uptime guarantee.
     • My domain: run your own named tunnel with a hostname on your domain that points at http://127.0.0.1:17640, then paste its https address. It does not change. Cloudflare Access can sit in front as an extra login.
4. The status line shows the address your phone uses, or that only this Mac can open it.

Picky has to be running and the Mac awake for the phone to connect. Prevent sleep keeps the Mac from idle sleep while web access runs; closing the lid still puts it to sleep.

Connect a phone

1. Press Connect a device. A QR code and an 8-character pairing code (XXXX-XXXX) appear. The code works once and expires after 5 minutes; five wrong attempts end it.
2. On the phone, open the address in Safari, tap Share, choose Add to Home Screen, and open Picky from the Home Screen.
3. Inside that app, scan the QR code with Scan QR or type the code.

Pair inside the Home Screen app, not in Safari: iOS keeps the Home Screen app’s login separate from Safari, so a pairing made in Safari does not carry over. After repeated failed attempts from the same address, pairing is blocked for 15 minutes.

Using it on the phone

• Room list: Picky (the main conversation) stays at the top, then Pickles in the same order as the Mac dock, so a reply never moves a row. Times read as just now, minutes ago, or hours ago. Dock groups appear as sections; tap a group header to collapse or expand it. The phone remembers which groups you collapsed, and collapsing one never changes the Mac dock. Archived Pickles sit at the bottom, and reading a room clears its unread mark on both the phone and Mac dock. Archiving from a room returns to the list after the Mac confirms. New Pickle creates one in a pinned or recent folder.
• Wide windows: from 768 points wide (a browser on the Mac, an iPad), the room list stays on the left and the open room fills the right side; the room list never opens a room on its own. Option+Up and Option+Down open the previous or next room in the list, and the browser’s back button returns to the room before. From 1200 points the Pickle work panel opens as a third column instead of covering the conversation. Narrower windows use the phone layout.
• Rooms look like the HUD conversation card. Tap a bubble to see what the Mac shows on hover (sent time, open as report, elapsed time).
• Sending: while a Pickle runs, send delivers guidance to the current work; after it completes, send starts a follow-up. For a cancelled or failed Pickle, send resumes or retries the work. The arrow next to send offers “after this response”, scheduled times, and a custom time. “After this response” is unavailable for cancelled or failed Pickles; timed delivery accepts text only, so attaching a photo disables it. Picky’s main room does not offer scheduled delivery. On a phone, Return inserts a new line and the send button sends. In a desktop browser, Return sends, Shift+Return inserts a new line, and Option+Return sends after the current reply, as in the HUD. While slash suggestions are open, the arrow keys select a row (hovering a row with the mouse selects it too), Return or Tab inserts it, and Esc dismisses the list; the list is announced to VoiceOver as the composer’s suggestions. Confirming an IME composition does not send. A message starting with ! runs a shell command, as on the Mac.
• Commands: type / in a Pickle composer to see matching slash commands, prompts, and skills. Tap a suggestion to insert it, add any arguments, then send.
• Background work: a summary above the Pickle composer expands into command and subagent states, elapsed time, and delivery results. When only background work remains, the composer sends a follow-up instead of guidance to an active response. Stopping an individual background task stays on the Mac.
• Stop: when background tasks are running, you choose between stopping the response only and stopping the background tasks too. Queued messages move back into the phone’s composer.
• Questions from Pickles and Picky can be answered in the room.
• Picky’s Tasks: the Picky room shows its background Tasks and its questions about handing work to a Pickle inside the conversation, where they started, as on the Mac: each Task with its state, a short result, and Stop or Continue; a waiting question with its three answers; an answered one as a line with Open Pickle when it created one. When a waiting question scrolls out of view, the bar above the composer points back to it. The room list counts running Tasks, and a waiting question marks the room like other questions.
• Photos: attach up to 10 images (20 MB each). They are saved on the Mac and sent as file paths, like files dropped on the HUD composer.
• Dictation: the mic records on the phone; the Mac transcribes it with the speech recognition service and language set in Picky, adds the text to the composer, and does not send it. Recordings stop after 5 minutes and are deleted after transcription. If the Mac’s speech recognition is not allowed, use Dictation permission → Ask for permission on the Mac first; a phone request never opens a permission prompt on the Mac.
• Files: links to files in a conversation, tool images, and artifacts open a read-only preview (text up to its first 1 MB, Markdown, images, PDF; HTML and SVG open with scripts disabled). Only files the conversation refers to can be opened. Picky’s main room also shows images read by the main agent; these image rows last until the remote gateway restarts.
• Work panel: the header opens Artifacts and Changes. The terminal stays on the Mac.
• Messages you send to Picky from the phone do not show a cursor bubble or speak on the Mac.
• Mac-only features: Push-to-Talk, screen context, the embedded terminal, Pi terminal sync, and dock drag.

Notifications

In the Home Screen app, open Settings and turn on Pickle notifications (iOS 16.4 or later, https entrance only). The phone is notified when a Pickle waits for your answer, finishes, or stops with an error, and when Picky replies to a message you sent from that phone. Nothing is sent for the room you have open. The app icon badge counts the rooms waiting for you. Send a test notification checks the setup.

Devices and revoking

The Mac lists paired phones under Paired phones with their last connection and notification state. Revoke disconnects that phone at once; it needs a new pairing code to come back. On the phone, Settings → Disconnect this device does the same from the other side.

Picky keeps remote access data in ~/Library/Application Support/Picky/Remote/: paired devices (only token hashes), notification keys, an audit log of pairing, commands, and file access (it records the full command line of ! shell commands, but not message text or recordings), and uploaded photos (deleted after 7 days).