peetzweg/opendisplay

OpenDisplay

Turn your spare Apple devices into second monitors for your Mac — free, open source, no subscription.

iPhone, iPad, and spare Macs. A self-hosted alternative to Apple Sidecar, Duet Display, and Luna Display: true extended display (not just mirroring), Retina-sharp, over USB or WiFi, with touch and scroll input.

Website · Quick start · How it works · FAQ · Contributing

Turning an iPhone or iPad into an external display for a Mac is a solved problem — but every existing option has a catch:

• Apple Sidecar is free but requires both devices on the same Apple ID, doesn't support iPhones at all, and only works on supported hardware pairs.
• Duet Display moved to a subscription.
• Luna Display requires a hardware dongle.

OpenDisplay is the missing option: a free, open-source, no-account, no-dongle way to use the iOS device you already own as a true second display. If you were about to write your own — don't! Contribute here instead; the hard parts (virtual display creation, low-latency H.264 pipeline, USB transport, input injection) are already working.

• 🖥️ True display extension — macOS treats the device as a real second monitor (drag windows to it, arrange it in System Settings), not a mirror. Mirroring is also available as a mode.
• 🔌 USB-wired for lowest latency — streams over the Lightning/USB-C cable via macOS's built-in usbmuxd; plug in and go, no network, no WiFi jitter, no helper tools.
• 📶 WiFi with zero config — the iPhone advertises itself via Bonjour; pick it from a dropdown on the Mac.
• 🔍 Retina / HiDPI — the virtual display matches the device panel pixel-for-pixel (@2x), so text is sharp.
• 👆 Touch input built in — your iPhone becomes a touchscreen for macOS: tap to click, drag to drag, and two-finger scroll that feels like a trackpad. (Apple Pencil support is on the roadmap.)
• 🔄 Portrait or landscape — rotate the device and the virtual display rebuilds itself as a vertical monitor at native resolution.
• ⚡ Low-latency pipeline — hardware H.264 or HEVC encode (VideoToolbox, real-time mode, no B-frames), TCP_NODELAY, frame-drop backpressure with keyframe recovery, decode-and-render via AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer.
• 💻 A spare Mac as a display — install the small OpenDisplay Receiver app (macOS 12+) on an old Mac and any other Mac extends onto it over WiFi or a Thunderbolt/Ethernet cable, at native Retina resolution.
• 🔒 Self-hosted & private — your screen never touches anyone's server. Two small apps, one TCP connection, that's it.

OpenDisplay is open source, so you can audit exactly what runs on your Mac and build it yourself.

For a Mac receiver, the closest Apple feature is AirPlay to Mac, not Sidecar. Luna and Duet both have Mac-to-Mac modes. A few newer apps target only this use case, mostly a 5K iMac next to an Apple silicon laptop.

? means the project does not document it. Figures come from each project's own site or README as of October 2026. Also in this space: MacDisplay (paid), Phoenix Display (new; the App Store version mirrors only), and Apple's Target Display Mode, which only works on non-Retina iMacs from 2009 to 2014.

Why do I see the purple screen-recording indicator in the menu bar? That's a macOS privacy indicator shown for any app that captures the screen — Duet, Luna, OBS, and Zoom trigger it too. Apple Sidecar doesn't, only because it's implemented inside the OS rather than on public capture APIs. It cannot (and shouldn't) be hidden by an app; it's how macOS tells you a capture is running.

The Mac app doesn't show my iPhone in the Connection menu (WiFi). Both sides need Local Network permission, and both fail silently without it: check Privacy & Security → Local Network on the Mac and on the iPhone, make sure both are on the same WiFi network, and keep the iPhone app open in the foreground. USB mode is unaffected.

What USB cable or version do I need? Your cable must support data — a charge-only USB cable will not work. Look for a cable described as a data, sync, or charging and data-transfer cable. A data-capable USB 2.0 cable is enough; USB 3, Thunderbolt, and video Alt Mode are not required. OpenDisplay streams video over a TCP connection through macOS's built-in usbmuxd, not as a USB video device. Its highest-quality preset uses 18 Mb/s, well below USB 2.0's 480 Mb/s high-speed link rate, so USB 2.0 has ample bandwidth for the stream. USB 1.x is not supported or tested. For best reliability, use a known-good data/sync cable, unlock the device, accept the Trust This Computer prompt if it appears, and avoid unreliable hubs or adapters.

Does it support iPad? The receiver app is universal (iPhone + iPad); iPad is the same codebase. iPad-specific polish (Pencil, pressure) is on the roadmap.

Can another Mac be the display? Yes. Install OpenDisplay Receiver (a separate, small app from the same release) on the spare Mac. It only needs macOS 12 Monterey or newer, so Macs from around 2015 onward qualify even though the sending Mac needs macOS 14. The receiver shows up on the sending Mac like a phone does and becomes a real extended Retina display. Over WiFi it works out of the box. For a cable, connect the two Macs with a Thunderbolt or USB4 cable (macOS creates a Thunderbolt Bridge network between them), with an Ethernet cable or adapters, or — on recent macOS on both Macs — a plain USB-C data cable (macOS runs a small network link over it; approve the allow accessory to connect prompt on each Mac, which appears depending on which Mac is plugged into which). The sender moves the session onto the cable automatically, even one plugged in mid-session, and the device row says Cable. Older Macs with a Mini DisplayPort-shaped Thunderbolt 1 or 2 port work with a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter and a Thunderbolt 2 cable. Input from the receiving Mac's keyboard and mouse is a follow-up (#147).

Which settings give the best picture? Out of the box OpenDisplay already picks the sharpest setup it can, so you rarely need to change anything. The defaults are: sender on Best, receiver at its Default display setting, and video filling the receiver's screen (fullscreen). If you want to tune it, four things matter.

1. The connection. A cable gives steadier latency than WiFi, but it does not need to be fast: the stream uses at most 18 Mb/s.

• iPhone or iPad: any USB data cable (see the USB question above).
• Mac receiver: a Thunderbolt or USB4 cable, Ethernet, or a USB-C data cable (see Can another Mac be the display?). The picture is the same over any of them; a Thunderbolt cable is not sharper than a USB-C data cable.
• WiFi works well for documents and slower motion. Expect a little more latency and the occasional hitch when the network is busy. 5 GHz or 6 GHz and a nearby access point help. If motion stutters, try Fast.
• On WiFi, set AirDrop on the sending Mac to Contacts Only or No One (Control Center, AirDrop). With Everyone, the Mac's WiFi pauses for about 75 ms twice a second to look for nearby devices, and the picture hitches each time. In our measurements this one setting removed almost all WiFi hitches.

2. The sender's quality setting. Best sends the full resolution. Balanced and Fast send fewer pixels: the image is softer, but encoding is faster, so motion is smoother and latency lower. The desktop's size stays the same.

3. Display size, per device, in the sender's device list (the arrows button next to Disconnect): Larger Text, Default, More Space or Native (1x). Each choice shows the exact desktop size it gives, like macOS's own Displays settings. More Space and Native look a little softer when the receiver cannot show that many pixels 1:1. The choice is remembered per device across reconnects, cable or WiFi, and rotation. Changing the virtual display's resolution in System Settings does not stick (OpenDisplay puts its own size back); use Display size instead.

4. The receiving Mac's display setting (Larger Text … More Space). In Extend mode this sets the default size of the extended desktop, which OpenDisplay renders at Retina scale and sends 1:1, up to the largest stream the codec allows:

• HEVC: up to 5120×2880. It is used when the sending Mac has Apple silicon and the receiving Mac decodes HEVC in hardware (Apple silicon, and most Intel Macs from 2017 on).
• H.264: up to 4096×2304, used otherwise. On a 5K iMac that means a 2048×1152-point desktop even at Default.
• Non-Retina panels (a 2013 iMac at 2560×1440, a 1080p display): the desktop is the panel's own size at 1x and goes out 1:1 at 60 fps with either codec, exactly like that Mac's own desktop.

More Space gives the extended desktop that much room too, but beyond those caps the picture is no longer 1:1: it is scaled once on the sender, so text is a little softer. Settings toward Larger Text send fewer pixels and are smoother.

Measured with an M5 Pro MacBook Pro sending to a 2017 5K iMac over a cable (HEVC, moving content; latency is capture to display):

So on that pair:

• Reading, writing and code: Default + Best. It is the sharpest and gives the full desktop. Motion is limited to about 30 fps by the sender's encoder.
• Sharp and smooth: one or two steps toward Larger Text (1600×900 on a 5K iMac) + Best. Text stays crisp and larger, at close to 60 fps.
• Video and fast animation: Default + Fast, which is softer but smooth.
• 2048×1152 no longer helps with HEVC: it runs at the same rate as Default with less room.

Other pairs behave the same way with different numbers. A newer or larger Apple silicon chip encodes faster; an M1 Pro manages about 23 fps at 5K. Receivers with a 4K-or-smaller panel get their full resolution 1:1 with either codec and run faster. If the receiver shows the video in a window instead of fullscreen, the picture is scaled once more and looks softer. In Mirror mode, the sending Mac's display sets the resolution, so the receiver's display setting has little effect. Measurements and the tools behind them: research/hevc-m5-2026-09-29, tools/quality.

Why H.264 and HEVC, and not AV1? Both have fast hardware encode and decode, and the latency is excellent. At the same resolution they run at the same frame rate on Apple silicon, but HEVC is sharper right after a window change and holds detail much better on a slow link. It is also the only way to send a 5K panel 1:1. So OpenDisplay uses HEVC whenever both Macs support it in hardware and falls back to H.264 everywhere else, with nothing to configure. iPhones and iPads with an A9 chip or later decode HEVC too. Colour detail is the same with both, because both send colour at a quarter of the resolution (4:2:0); fuller colour is tracked in #322.

Is my screen content sent anywhere? No. One direct TCP connection between your Mac and your device, over your cable or your LAN. No servers, no accounts, no analytics. Full details — including what the apps store locally and the current WiFi-encryption caveat — on the privacy page.

What's the license? Can I fork it or use it commercially? GPL-3.0. Use, study, and adapt it freely — commercially too. If you distribute a modified version it must stay open source under the same license with the original attribution intact, so improvements flow back instead of into closed forks. (Releases up to v0.4.x were MIT-licensed and remain available under those terms.)

Will it break on a macOS update? Possibly — CGVirtualDisplay is private API. The same risk applies to every virtual-display product. The capture/streaming pipeline itself uses only public APIs.

Audio? Out of scope for now.

The official apps cover a Mac sender and an iPhone/iPad receiver on iOS 15+. Other people have built their own clients that speak the same protocol, so you can also use an Android device or an older iPad as a display, or drive one from Linux. The wire protocol is specified in PROTOCOL.md, so a new client can be written against the spec instead of reverse-engineered from the Swift sources. If your hardware is not covered yet, start here:

Android receivers

• gprot42/android-opendisplay - GrapheneOS receiver for de-Googled Pixel phones and tablets, Android 8.0+
• josepacelli/opendisplay-android - Android receiver, Android 8.0+, works with an unmodified Mac app

Older iOS receivers

• cuongpham1/ipad-iphone-second-monitor-ios12-free - iOS 12 client for iPads and iPhones that cannot run the official app

Linux senders

• tixwho/opendisplay-linux - drive an iPhone or iPad from a Wayland desktop (KDE Plasma, Hyprland)

These are fan-made projects, not official builds. They are not affiliated with OpenDisplay and are not maintained, reviewed, or supported by us, so please report issues with them in their own repositories. Listing them here also says nothing about our own plans: an official OpenDisplay app may still ship for any of these platforms later.

MAC (sender)                                      iPHONE / iPAD (receiver)
CGVirtualDisplay  ← macOS believes a monitor is attached
   → ScreenCaptureKit (capture the virtual display)
   → VideoToolbox H.264 or HEVC (hardware, real-time)
   → TCP  [4-byte length][Annex B frame]  ═══════→  NWListener :9000
                                                      → AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer
   ← JSON control messages (hello, touch, scroll) ═══
   → CGEvent injection (click / drag / scroll)

The phone listens and the Mac connects — that ordering is what makes the exact same code work over USB (via the usbmuxd daemon built into every macOS install) and WiFi. An iPhone or iPad announces its panel pixels; a Mac receiver announces the backing size of its current scaled display mode. The sender creates an @2x CGVirtualDisplay with the corresponding logical working area, negotiates a codec-safe stream raster, and streams the pixels back.

Everything that crosses the socket — framing, discovery, the video format, every control message — is specified in PROTOCOL.md. How the protocol evolves across releases is covered in COMPATIBILITY.md.

CGVirtualDisplay is a private CoreGraphics API (the same one used by BetterDisplay and DeskPad) — which is precisely why this project can't ship on the App Store and lives on GitHub instead.

You need two apps: a Mac app (captures and sends) and an iOS app (receives and displays). To use a second Mac as the display, install OpenDisplay Receiver on it instead of the iOS app.

Grab OpenDisplay.dmg from the latest release. The app is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, so it opens with a plain double-click on macOS 14+ — no Gatekeeper warning. Open the .dmg and drag the app to Applications.

For a Mac that should be the display, grab OpenDisplayReceiver.dmg from the same release instead. It runs on macOS 12+ and is signed and notarized the same way; both apps update themselves via Sparkle.

Needs iOS / iPadOS 15 or newer. That reaches the 16.7.x line (iPad 5, iPad Pro 1st gen, iPhone 8, iPhone X) and the 15.8.x line, where Apple left the iPad Air 2, the iPad mini 4, the iPhone 6s, 7 and the first SE. If your iPad can't be updated past 15.8, it can still be a second display (#72). Apple Pencil hover needs iPadOS 16.4 and a hover-capable iPad and Pencil pairing (see Apple's list); everything else works the same on every supported version.

• TestFlight (recommended): join the public beta at testflight.apple.com/join/3NYaY11c.
• Build from source: open the project in Xcode, select your free Apple ID under Signing, hit Run. Takes ~2 minutes.

brew install xcodegen   # project generation

Maintainers preparing a release should use the compatibility and publishing checks in RELEASING.md.

Xcode 15+ and a free or paid Apple developer account (to sideload the iOS app onto your device).

git clone https://github.com/peetzweg/opendisplay.git
cd opendisplay
echo "DEVELOPMENT_TEAM=YOURTEAMID" > .env   # your Apple team ID, for signing
./generate.sh                               # runs xcodegen with your .env
xcodebuild -project OpenSidecar.xcodeproj -scheme OpenSidecarMac \
  -configuration Debug -derivedDataPath build build
xcodebuild -project OpenSidecar.xcodeproj -scheme OpenSidecariOS \
  -configuration Debug -destination 'generic/platform=iOS' \
  -derivedDataPath build -allowProvisioningUpdates build

(Or open OpenSidecar.xcodeproj in Xcode and hit Run on each target. Your team ID is shown at developer.apple.com/account under Membership, or just pick your team in Xcode's Signing pane.)

1. Install + open OpenDisplay on the iPhone (it listens on port 9000).
2. On the Mac, run ./run.sh (or just open the app) — it talks to macOS's built-in usbmuxd directly and auto-connects over the cable. No tunnel tools needed.
3. Grant Screen Recording (for capture) and Accessibility (for touch) when macOS asks — one time each.
4. Drag a window onto your new display. Done.

Open the iPhone app, then pick "iPhone (WiFi)" from the Connection menu in the Mac app. Discovery is automatic via Bonjour. USB has lower latency; WiFi has no cable.

macOS and iOS gate several things this app needs — most prompt on first use, but some fail silently if denied or missed. The Mac app shows a live permission status panel; the iPhone app has a settings screen (shake the phone, or tap Settings & Help when idle).

All live under Privacy & Security in System Settings (Mac) / Settings (iPhone). The Local Network ones are only needed for WiFi mode — USB works without them. If the prompt never appeared, toggle the entry manually or force-quit and reopen the app.

Both apps keep a local log of connection events. Nothing is uploaded anywhere; the logs only leave a device when you share them.

• Mac: click Logs in the app panel. Finder opens with ~/Library/Logs/OpenDisplay selected.
• iPhone/iPad: shake the device (or tap Settings & Help when idle), then open Connection log. Share hands the file to Mail, Messages or Files; copy puts the text on the clipboard for pasting straight into an issue.

The phone log is the half usually missing from a WiFi report: whether the receiver ever announced itself, whether its listener restarted, whether the decoder was failing. Attach both if you can.

Tracked as roadmap issues — pick one up if you'd like to contribute!

Connectivity & distribution

• #16 Encrypted WiFi transport with pairing code
• App Store release of the iOS app + notarized Mac downloads

Input

• #4 Apple Pencil with pressure and tilt
• #5 Right-click and multi-touch gestures
• #6 Hardware keyboard passthrough
• #7 On-screen modifier key sidebar

Display & media

• #9 Resolution & quality settings
• #10 HEVC encoding
• #12 Audio forwarding

Experience

• #11 Menu bar app mode with auto-connect
• #13 Battery & lifecycle awareness

Exploratory

• #14 Remote access beyond the local network
• #15 Additional client platforms

Done: prebuilt releases, built-in USB connectivity (no helper tools), WiFi via Bonjour, portrait mode, touch + two-finger scroll, performance overlay, iPad support, multiple devices at once (#8 — every connected device becomes its own extended display), a Mac as the display (#17, WiFi or Thunderbolt/Ethernet cable).

The macOS app updates itself with Sparkle — an open-source framework, not a hosted service. Update checks hit only our own infrastructure:

• The app reads an appcast feed hosted on the landing-page site: https://opendisplay.app/appcast.xml (SUFeedURL in project.yml).
• The release workflow (.github/workflows/release.yml, build-mac job) runs Sparkle's generate_appcast against the notarized OpenDisplay.dmg, signs it with the EdDSA key, commits the result to public/appcast.xml, and dispatches the Pages deploy — so the published feed points download links at the GitHub Release assets.
• Sparkle verifies both the EdDSA signature and Apple's notarization before installing. The app checks automatically in the background (SUEnableAutomaticChecks) and offers a manual "Check for Updates…" button next to Quit in the menu-bar window.

Auto-update is scaffolded but inert until the signing keys are in place. The private signing key is never committed — it lives only as a CI secret. To switch it on:

1. Generate the key pair. Run Sparkle's generate_keys once (it ships in the Sparkle SPM artifact bundle and in the release tarball at bin/generate_keys). It prints a public key and stores the private key in your login keychain.
2. Public key → paste it into SUPublicEDKey in project.yml (replace the REPLACE_WITH_SUPUBLICEDKEY_FROM_generate_keys placeholder), then re-run xcodegen generate and commit.
3. Private key → add it as the SPARKLE_PRIVATE_KEY GitHub Actions secret (export it with generate_keys -x private_key.pem if needed). The appcast step in release.yml no-ops gracefully while this secret is absent, so releases keep working until you're ready.
4. The first appcast publishes on the next release after both keys are set. Confirm https://opendisplay.app/appcast.xml resolves, then test the full update flow on a real signed/notarized build (check → download → verify → relaunch) — this can't be validated in CI.

Issues and PRs are very welcome — especially for the roadmap items above. The codebase is intentionally small: ~4 Swift files per platform, with Sparkle (SPM) as the macOS app's only runtime dependency, for auto-update. The How it works section above is the architecture doc; see Mac/CGVirtualDisplayPrivate.h for the private API surface.

Releases are automated with release-please: use Conventional Commits (feat:, fix:, docs:, …) and a release PR with a generated changelog appears automatically — merging it tags the release and attaches prebuilt artifacts.

GPL-3.0 — Copyright (c) 2026 Philip Poloczek.

Free to use, study, and adapt. If you distribute a modified version it must remain open source under the same license, with the original attribution intact — improvements flow back to everyone instead of into closed forks. (Versions up to v0.4.x were MIT-licensed; those releases remain available under MIT.)

Keywords: iPhone second monitor Mac, iPad external display, free Sidecar alternative, Duet Display alternative, open source screen extension macOS, use iPhone as extra screen, virtual display Mac, USB second display.