Remote access: Deska on the web & mobile

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 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:

• Computers: every machine on your account (plus any shared with you), with a live status for which are online right now.
• Terminals: open a new terminal on that machine or attach to one already running, in a full, interactive view with a special-keys bar (Esc, Tab, Enter, Backspace, Ctrl combos, arrows and sticky Ctrl, Alt and Shift modifiers) so the keys a shell needs are one tap away on a phone.
• Inbox: the coding agents running on your computers, with their approvals, questions and diffs, grouped by what needs you first. Starting a new task from the phone is part of it.
• Workspaces: the workspaces on each computer. The phone can open a new workspace on the desktop, not just look at the existing ones.
• 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 Use on your 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. Your devices, and the switch that turns Remote Access off, live in desktop Settings → Remote Access.

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, they choose Connect a shared computer and enter 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.

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 page through the diff of what it changed. 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. Ask what is running, what failed, or tell it to open a panel or kick off a task.

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 dashboard lists them under Devices, with when each was last seen and which ones can act as a host, and a Revoke button on each. 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. On the free plan, one client device (a phone or a web session) connects to your computers at a time; signing in on a new one offers to sign the previous one out. 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 three things happen: the breadcrumb names it, its screen opens with what it is doing and which of your agents are signed in on it, and from then on new panels open there.

• Open a terminal here starts 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.
• Browse its files opens the file tree on that machine, starting from the folder it names itself. 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.

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 is the one metered feature, drawing from your monthly voice minutes.