Everything Glass does.

Glass is a free, open-source remote desktop for Mac and Linux that you use from a browser. To control a Mac from an iPad wirelessly, run one install command on the Mac, then open its address in Safari on the iPad: touch, trackpad, keyboard and Apple Pencil work at about 20 ms, at home or from anywhere. How it compares with Sidecar and Screen Sharing.

Most remote desktops ride the same pipeline as video calls, which buffers to look smooth. Glass hands frames from the hardware encoder straight to your browser's decoder and never waits. Around that sits everything you need to work, help someone, or let an AI agent work while you watch.

Picture and speed

Feels local: Hardware H.264 or HEVC over WebTransport, decoded off the main thread: about 20 ms from the computer's screen to yours. A live meter shows the real latency.
Up to 120 fps New: On ProMotion iPads and fast monitors, motion runs at up to 120 frames a second, and drops back to 60 for anyone who can't show more.
True colour New: Display P3 from a wide-colour Mac display stays P3 in your browser, so photos and designs look as they should.
Sharp text: For code and documents: native size, 4:2:2 colour while things move, and a lossless 4:4:4 picture once the screen is still.
Every display: Live previews of every screen along the bottom: tap one to switch, or see them all side by side, arranged like your desk.
Your device as a second display New: Your iPad, a laptop or any browser becomes an extra display for the Mac, extending its desktop like Sidecar, in Retina where the screen is.
Fit this device: Reshape the Mac's desktop to your screen while you're connected: no black bars on an iPad or an ultrawide.
Steady on bad Wi-Fi: Adapts its bitrate to the network, reconnects by itself, never shows a corrupted frame, and asks for a smaller picture when your device is struggling.

Control

Full control: Trackpad, mouse, keyboard, touch and pinch to zoom. Unlock a locked Mac, even with the lid closed. ⌘Tab, ⌘Space and the other shortcuts iPadOS keeps for itself still work.
Trackpad mode New: On a phone the screen works like a laptop trackpad: drag to move the pointer, tap to click, two-finger tap to right-click, double-tap and hold to drag. Zoom in and the view follows the pointer.
Apple Pencil New: Pressure and tilt reach the Mac as tablet input, so Photoshop, Affinity and Krita draw the way they do with a drawing tablet.
Your keyboard, per machine: ⌘ and Ctrl swaps remembered for each computer, a PC-keyboard mode, and a shortcut bar for touch screens.
Games: Capture the mouse for games and 3D apps (relative motion, Esc to release), and game controllers that reach a Linux computer as if plugged in.
Every machine: All your computers in one menu, with Wake-on-LAN for sleeping ones. Switch between them without leaving the page.
Restart, from anywhere: Restart Glass or the whole computer and reconnect when it's back, or wake it first.

Between your devices

Your microphone on the computer New: Talk into the Mac's apps from your iPad or phone: calls, dictation, recordings. On a Mac it comes in as Glass Microphone, a small driver Glass installs with one password; on Linux nothing to install.
Sound, and what's playing New: The computer's audio plays on your device, low latency, even on silent. Your media controls and lock screen show the track and artwork, and play, pause and skip it on the computer.
Clipboard with images New: Copy and paste both ways: text, rich text with its formatting, and images.
A file browser New: Browse the computer's folders with previews, download, upload into any folder, make folders, rename and move to the Trash. For the owner only.
Send and receive files: Drop files or whole folders on the screen to send them, or pick files on the computer to get them, directly between your devices.
Share to your computer: Share photos, files or a link to Glass from another app, and they land on the computer (Android, ChromeOS and desktop browsers).

On every device

Just a browser: Open a link on your iPad, phone or laptop: Safari, Chrome, Edge or Firefox. Nothing to install on the device in your hands.
An app when you want one: Install Glass from the browser or add it to the Home Screen: full screen, its own icon with a badge, a shortcut to each of your machines, and on a desktop the toolbar moves into the title bar.
Notifications: On your phone, iPad or laptop, even with Glass closed: an agent needs you, someone asks to connect (allow it right from the notification), or a message. End-to-end encrypted.
Picture in picture: Keep an eye on the computer, or an agent at work, in a floating window while you do something else.
All your screens: With several monitors here and several displays there, one display on each, full screen.
Thoughtful details: Keeps your screen awake while connected, sends your clipboard when you switch back, pauses while you're away, and opens even when the computer is asleep to say so.

Helping someone

Quick support New: Someone without Glass runs one line, curl -fsSL glassdesk.dev/help | sh (on Windows, irm glassdesk.dev/help | iex), and reads you a code. You type it at glassdesk.dev/help and connect once they allow you. Nothing stays installed when they stop.
Links that work once: Let a phone or a friend's laptop in with a one-time link or QR code. Each device gets its own pass; revoke one or all with a click.
Links with limits: View-only, no files, no clipboard, an hour and done. Ask first, or require Face ID or Touch ID every time.
Chat and drawing: Message everyone connected and see the conversation in the Mac app, or draw on the screen so the other person sees exactly where to click.
A privacy screen: Blank the computer's own screen and block its keyboard and mouse while you work on it.
From anywhere: glass link --anywhere connects any browser straight to the computer over WebRTC: end-to-end encrypted, no ports opened.
Your computers New: Sign in at glassdesk.dev/computers with a passkey, no email or password, to see which computers are online and open any of them. glass account add puts a computer there; getting in still takes the computer's own sign-in.

AI agents, supervised

One click to add: Add Glass to Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Cursor from the Mac app, or paste the MCP config into any other client.
You see every step: A banner in the viewer shows what the agent is doing, with a marker where it clicks. Pause or stop it any time.
It asks first: Before sending, buying or deleting it asks you, in the viewer, the Mac app or a notification on your phone, and it hands over when it needs your password or a code.
Agents from anywhere New: An agent on Vercel, in claude.ai or on a server asks to use your computer through standard MCP sign-in, Vercel Connect included. Approve it once with one tap; it can't touch passwords or security settings, waits while you're using the computer, and every step is logged.
Reads apps as text New: On a Mac, an agent can read an app's window as a list of its buttons, fields and text, then press a button or fill in a field by name, without moving your pointer. Faster and more exact than working from screenshots.
Any of your computers: An agent can work on any machine on your tailnet that runs Glass, not just the one it runs on.

The Mac app and the console

A real desktop app: On a Mac or a Windows PC (Glass.app, or Glass in the Start menu). Setup in a few clicks, then everything the command line does in a native, GPU-drawn window: who's connected, chat, links with QR codes, machines, history, agents, settings and teams. Updates with one click.
A console in the browser: At /admin/ on the computer: who's connected, requests to allow, links, history, access rules and an address book of your machines.
A command line too: Every feature has a glass command, for scripts, SSH and agents.
Keeps itself current: Glass checks for updates, and open viewers reload into new versions on their own.

Teams and security

Private by default: On your own Tailscale network your devices get in and nothing else does. Remote access stays off until you turn it on.
Encrypted end to end: TLS 1.3 over QUIC on your tailnet, DTLS over WebRTC from anywhere, and notifications encrypted so the push service can't read them.
For teams: Sign in with Google, Entra, Okta or LDAP. Access rules per person, domain or group, SCIM provisioning and device posture checks.
Self-hostable: Run the remote-access relay yourself and keep glassdesk.dev out of the path entirely.

Beyond the desktop

One app's window: Stream a single window on its own, sized to your screen.
A terminal: A shell on the computer inside the viewer: resize it or make it full screen.
Local web apps: Open the computer's local web servers (localhost:3000) from your tailnet.
Recording: Record sessions to MP4 on the computer, one at a time or every session.

How Glass compares

Glass is built for one thing: a computer you own, controlled from the browser on whatever is in your hands, as close to local as the network allows. Other tools fit other jobs, and these pages say when:

On a Mac or Linux

Glass runs on the computer you control: macOS 13 or later (Apple Silicon or Intel), or Linux (x86_64 or ARM64) on Wayland (beta). You view from any modern browser.

On the computer	Mac	Linux
Screen, input, sound, clipboard, files, links, chat, notifications, agents	Yes	Yes
Your microphone	Yes (Glass Microphone)	Yes
Apple Pencil pressure	Yes	As a mouse
Second display, fit this device, one app's window	Yes	No
120 fps, Display P3	Yes	60 fps
Game controllers	No	Yes
The Glass app	Yes	Command line and console

Two minutes to set up.

InstallPaste the one-liner on the computer you want to control. It checks the download before installing.
Follow alongThe setup connects Tailscale and walks you through the permissions, checking each one as you go.
Scan and goScan the QR code with your iPad. Glass starts with the computer from now on, and keeps itself up to date.

Or let your agent do it.

Glass comes with a skill for AI agents. Ask Claude Code to set up Glass on my Mac mini and it finds the machine on your tailnet, installs Glass over SSH, and tells you exactly which switch to click on that screen. Later, just ask it for a link to your computer.

$ mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/glass && curl -fsSL https://glassdesk.dev/skill.md -o ~/.claude/skills/glass/SKILL.md

Tell us what you think.

Bugs, ideas, what you'd use it for. It goes straight to the people building Glass. You can also run glass feedback "…" or open a GitHub issue.