Remote access: Deska on the web & mobile

The phone access dialog separates signing in to your account from inviting another account. Follow the numbered QR steps or sign in manually at app.deska.dev. Existing devices show when they were last seen; that does not imply a live connection.

The Phone page separates connection settings, account devices and shared access; phone notifications are on the Notifications page. Device rows show readable platform and last-seen details; Remove still asks for confirmation before signing a device out.

Deska is a desktop app, but the work does not have to stay at your desk. The companion app, on the web at app.deska.dev and as a phone app, gives you a window into a Deska environment from anywhere: drive a terminal, watch a build, answer an agent, check a preview, or ask Dex to do something while you are away from the keyboard.

It is a companion, not a replacement. The heavy lifting still happens on the real machine. The companion connects to it over a secure relay and mirrors what is happening, with controls sized for a small screen. Turn on remote access in desktop Settings, Phone, under Remote access, and sign into the companion with the same account to get started.

Open app.deska.dev in any browser, or install the mobile app, and sign in with the same Deska account you use on the desktop. Once you are connected to a computer, the companion gives you:

• Home: your computers and, under each one, its workspaces, each saying the last thing that happened there: the task, and whether it is working, finished, failed or waiting on you. The coral number counts only what an agent is waiting on you for (an approval or a question), and the agent waiting longest sits at the top with its answer buttons. Tasks that did not finish are counted in one quiet row under the numbers that opens the Inbox, and each number opens the list it counts.
• Computers: every machine on your account (plus any shared with you), with a live status for which are online right now. A computer’s page lists its agent accounts and how much of each plan is left on it, the numbers its desktop shows under Dex: tap one for every window and when it resets.
• Terminals: open a new terminal on that machine or attach to one already running, in a full, interactive view with a row of the keys a phone keyboard lacks. With the keyboard put away it keeps Ctrl, ^C, Esc, the arrows and Enter, so you can stop an agent or pick an answer from its menu without typing; while you type it adds Tab, Alt and a few symbols. Under it, the other terminals, browsers and chats of the same workspace are one tap away.
• Inbox: the coding agents running on your computers, with their approvals, questions and diffs, grouped by what needs you first. Work that finished in the last day stays in view and older work folds under Earlier; search by title, project, branch or computer, narrow the list to one computer or one workspace, or use Filter to show one status (Approval, Question, Failed, Interrupted, Working, Landed) or one agent, each counted. The last chip orders the list: Needs you first (the usual order), Recently finished, Newest first or Longest first. In any order but the first, what needs you stays on top and the rest of the day’s work is one list, each row saying what it is ordered by: when it finished, when it was created, or how long its last turn took. Starting a new task from the phone is part of it.
• Workspaces: the workspaces on each computer, each with the last thing that happened in it. The phone can open a new workspace on the desktop, not just look at the existing ones. Its panels list what each one is about, the same description its title carries on the desktop. Tap a workspace’s name at the top of its page and everything you can do with it is a row: start a task or open a panel there, change worktree, see all of its tasks, or go to the computer it is on. The Workspaces tab orders them by Most active, by Last task finished or by Name, and Home and each computer’s page follow that order. On a workspace’s page, the ⇅ button at the end of the worktree row orders its tasks and its panels (Recently used, the desktop’s own, Recently opened or Name); All panels carries the same choice. Each order is remembered on that phone and shared by every list of its kind.
• Worktrees: in a workspace’s list of worktrees, the ⋯ beside each one shows what is in it (commits only on its branch, uncommitted changes, open terminals, its task) and offers Switch to this worktree and Remove worktree, with the same confirm and the same rule as on the desktop. Clean up sits beside New worktree, and a task’s ⋯ menu offers Remove worktree too. The computer needs the latest desktop version; an older one simply does not show these actions, and Deska Cloud boxes do not offer them yet.
• Web preview: type a local port (say 3000) and the dev server running on the remote machine is tunneled to your screen, so you can check a preview from the couch.
• Dex: the same canvas-aware assistant, reachable from every screen, by typing or by voice.

Your own computers need no pairing at all: turn on Remote Access on the desktop, sign into the companion app with the same account, and the machine appears in your Computers list automatically. From then on it reconnects on its own whenever it is online.

The desktop walks you through it: click Connect phone in the top bar, and Remote Access turns itself on. The window then asks for the one step that is yours: open app.deska.dev in the phone’s browser and sign in. Nothing to install; the QR next to the instruction is just a shortcut past typing the address, and it signs the phone in without a password. Once a phone is on the account, that same window simply confirms it is connected, and the top bar’s button reads Phone with a dot on Dex: green when your phone can reach this computer, gray while it connects, red when the connection needs a look (click it to see why). Your devices, and the switch that turns Remote Access off, live in desktop Settings → Phone → Remote access.

Settings → Phone → Remote access shows this computer’s connection state beside Enable remote access. The compact feature list expands through How remote access works. Account devices stay visible even when access is off; browser sessions use a browser icon. Remove asks for confirmation before signing a device out.

Sharing a computer with someone else is a one-time, code-based handshake:

1. On the desktop, choose Share this computer and Deska shows a short, single-use code.
2. In their companion app, under Computers, they choose Add a computer, then Code or QR, and scan the QR or type that code.
3. Your machine appears in their Computers list as a collaborator, and they show up in your members list, where you can see their role and revoke their access at any time.

Pick a terminal from the list, or open a new one right from the phone, and you get its live output in the same shell your desktop is showing. You can start a build at your desk and keep an eye on it from the kitchen.

While your phone holds a terminal, the session is sized to the phone’s screen so nothing wraps or clips, and the desktop shows a small strip on that panel with a Take it back button. Closing the terminal on the phone, or taking it back on the desktop, returns the session to the desktop’s size.

Tap the terminal to bring up the keyboard; until you do, a small Tap to type note sits at the bottom. Drag a finger up or down to scroll. In a coding agent such as Claude Code or Codex, or a full-screen program like less, the drag scrolls inside the program, the way your mouse wheel does on the desktop. To copy, touch and hold the output: the terminal’s text opens in a sheet where you select any part or press Copy all. Holding backspace on an iPhone keyboard deletes whole words, as it does elsewhere.

This is the reason to keep the app on your phone. Your agent threads travel with you: see which ones are running and which are waiting, read the transcript, answer a question the agent asked, approve or deny a tool call from a card, and read what it changed file by file. The conversation reads like a chat: the agent’s steps fold into short summaries you can open, and a finished reply ends with a button that copies it whole (on the phone it opens the share sheet, with Copy in it). Hold a message you sent to open Copy text and, when available, Edit in a copy. The edit opens as a draft in another conversation and keeps the current files. A file the agent links to in its answer opens right there, and a markdown file opens as a page you can read, its source a tap away. The composer works like the desktop’s: one chip picks the agent and then its model, its default first, and the other, named after the permission mode, holds thinking, permissions and Build or Plan, with Stop and Steer beside Send while a turn runs. A new task runs in place, on the branch your computer is on (or in the worktree it is standing in), and a new worktree is one pick away. The phone remembers what you choose: each agent’s model, thinking and permissions, which start at Full access unless the agent has a default of its own on that computer, and where you chose to run. A change made inside a running task counts too, so the next task opens the same way. Dictating takes the row over: the coral send at its end transcribes and sends in one press (or queues, starts or answers, as the box would), and the check adds the words to the box to read first. Typing / at the start of the box lists the agent’s commands and skills; tap one to write it. Messages you queue wait under Up next above the box. Tap one for Steer now, which sends it into the running turn without stopping it, or Send now when nothing is running (after Deska restarted in the middle of a turn, for example), Edit, which brings it back to the box with its images, Move to top and Remove from queue. Hold one by its handle in the full list to move it. Above the box, a row of chips names what the task has besides its conversation: Subagents and Plan while it works, its Changes and its pull request once it is done; each chip opens what it names, and the row scrolls sideways when they do not fit. Tap a task’s title for its details: its changes and pull request open for review, its workspace and computer take you to their pages, and the agent, model and permission mode it runs with are listed under them. A failed task you have already dealt with goes away with Dismiss, which settles it on the computer too. An agent that gets stuck the moment you close your laptop is an agent you have to babysit; from the phone you can unblock it in a few taps and let it keep going.

Dex is on every screen of the companion, by typing or by voice: hold him in the tab bar to talk, tap him to type. Ask what is running, what failed, or tell him to open a panel or kick off a task. The top of his screen names the computer the turn runs on; tap it to pick another. Voice on the web & phone.

Rather than checking the app, let it tell you. Deska can push a notification to your phone when an agent finishes, when an agent needs your input, and when a long-running command finishes or fails. Notifications can be limited to when you are away from the desktop, so a busy session at your desk does not buzz your pocket, and tapping one deep-links straight to the thread that raised it. Full detail in Notifications.

Every install that signs in becomes a registered device on your account. Your account page lists them under Devices, with when each was last seen and which ones are the desktop app on one of your computers, and a Revoke button on each. Revoked devices fold away at the end of the list. Revoking a phone cuts its access: it can no longer reach your computers, drive a terminal or start a Dex turn, and it has to sign in again from scratch. Do it the moment a device is lost, and do it for anything you no longer recognise. Opening a computer from your phone or the browser is part of Deska Pro: on the free plan those surfaces still list your computers and can wake them, and the moment you open one Deska says so and offers the three free days. See Plans & billing.

The desktop app is not only the machine other devices reach. It can also reach them. The first segment of the breadcrumb, at the top of the window, names the computer you are working on. It says local by default, because that is where Deska is running.

Pick another machine and the breadcrumb names it, the desk becomes that machine’s (its projects, its canvas and its panels, as Computers explains), and from then on new panels open there.

• A terminal you open there is a shell on that machine. It keeps running after you close the panel, and after you close Deska: the terminal belongs to the computer, not to the window looking at it. Come back and reattach.
• The file tree there is that machine’s. Open a file and the editor is the same editor, saving back to that machine.

Saving is guarded. If an agent running on the machine changed the file while you had it open, the save is refused and you are told, rather than your buffer quietly replacing work you did not see.

Source Control works on it too. The branch, the changed files, the diff and the history come from that machine, and staging, committing, pushing and pulling all run there. Two things stay on the computer Deska is running on and say so when you reach for them: the one-click commit pipeline and the commit message Dex writes for you.

A panel a machine cannot serve is shown dimmed, with the reason, instead of vanishing from the list. What a computer offers depends on what it is running: a Deska Cloud box gives you terminals, your agent CLIs, its files and its repositories today.

Open a computer in the mobile app and Files sits under your agents, for the reason the agents are there at all: after one of them has worked, the next thing you want is to read what it wrote.

It starts from the folder that machine names itself, so there is nothing to type. Tap through the folders and open any text file; the viewer is monospace and numbered, and it does not wrap, because code whose indentation reflows stops being code.

Images, audio and video open too: a voice note plays in a small player, a clip in the phone’s own player, and a long file shows how much has arrived while it loads. The phone opens files up to 100 MB. Playing video needs the newest version of the mobile app, and audio and video need the newest Deska on that computer.

The machine on the other end can be one of two kinds today, and the companion reaches both the same way: you sign in and connect. They differ only in where the environment lives and whether it keeps running when you walk away.

• Your own computer (Personal): your Mac, Windows or Linux desktop running Deska. It is reachable while that machine is on and Remote Access is enabled. Nothing extra to host, nothing extra to pay; it is part of the app.
• A Deska-hosted environment (Managed): a cloud development environment Deska runs for you. Because it lives in the cloud, it keeps working in the background even with your laptop closed.

The companion carries the same voice experience as the desktop: tap the mic, speak, and your words are transcribed and handed to Dex, which streams its reply back. It is the easiest way to nudge a long-running task or ask “did the build pass?” without typing on a phone. Voice draws from your monthly voice minutes.