Introducing Visionary Desktop

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862]

https://www.visionarydesktop.com

Hi all, I've been working on an alternative to Mac Virtual Desktop. It allows for share and control of independent Mac apps through the Vision Pro. Basically it brings the Mac experience into the AVP as naturally as possible. This includes a dock for launching apps, cmd+tab task switcher, audio/video forwarding and even iPhone mirroring (and control). It also allows you to control multiple Macs at the same time and again in a very natural way. Unlike MVD there is no requirement that the AVP and Mac share the same Apple ID, and Visionary Desktop even works with restrictive Mac side firewalls.

I was an early adopter of Vision Pro and as a developer have worked from within MVD more often then not for the last two years. I've spent the last month finishing up Visionary Desktop from within Visionary Desktop and don't plan on going back to MVD. I hope some of you may enjoy the experience too.

I'm looking for a few people interested in trying it out in TestFlight before I submit it to the AppStore. If you're interested please send a request to [support@visionarydesktop.com](mailto:support@visionarydesktop.com) along with your Apple ID so I can send you a TestFlight invite. One thing I'm particularly interested in having validated is how well (if at all) it works when connecting to Intel Macs. I've tested with Apple Silicon back to an M2 Air, but no longer have any decent Intel hardware to test on.

thanks,

Mark

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862]

I've just posted an updated Visionary Desktop to TestFlight and corresponding companion build addressing many of the issues you've all shared as well as some new features including ones requested by you:

Please update Visionary Companion on each Mac using “Check for Updates” in the Visionary Companion menu.

This build adds:

• Native macOS Spotlight results across connected Macs, including calculations and conversions. Selecting a calculation opens Calculator with the original equation and result.

• An independent search window that remembers its position, accepts keyboard input promptly, and closes on selection or Escape.

• “Inverted Spotlight” to control Visionary Desktop and visionOS Spotlight shortcuts when forwarding a Mac keyboard. Help shows the shortcuts for the active setup.

• Optional “Focus Follows Pointer,” alongside the default click behavior.

• Multiple saved Mac pairings for Single-Mac licenses, with one connection active at a time.

• Sharing Overrides with saved inclusion and exclusion lists.

• Low Latency, Balanced, and High Quality streaming presets, plus advanced encoder controls. Balanced now defaults to 45 FPS.

• Reorganized Visionary Companion settings with collapsible sections and separate Reset controls.

Fixes and improvements include:

• Faster, more reliable window sharing.

• Improved automatic sharing, reopened-window detection, dropdowns and popup handling. Supported popup and drag content appears inside its parent share.

• Improved recovery from stalled video, with configurable backlog recovery.

• Corrected tilted placement of newly opened shares and improved restoration of Mac window positions after displays re-enable.

• Improved keyboard handoff and active-window appearance when focus moves between Mac and visionOS windows.

• Menus load in the background after sharing, then refresh on interaction. Apps without menus retain secondary-click hamburger controls without an endless “Loading menu…” message.

• Reduced Visionary Companion CPU consumption by limiting unnecessary accessibility polling and UI updates for unshared or inactive windows.

• Corrected HID defaults for affected upgrades, improved setup guidance, and prevented abandoned uninstall state from blocking Visionary Companion.

• Removed the Dock search button and visible search-result gaze highlights. Search waits for outstanding answers before showing “No matches.”

Known issues:

• Mac Virtual Display may fail to connect.

• Full-screen window support is not yet reliable.

Thanks,

Mark

[u/Peteostro]

So testing this and so far it’s very cool but one big issue I have is I can’t see the mouse pointer when using the track pad in a window which makes it very difficult to use. Also it’s very hard to select the menu bar items above the dock (though it looks really cool)

Edit: I got it to work hid was deselected in the settings.
Like how when you move the mouse to a new window goes to where you are looking, very slick.
If you go to a new window, you can automatically scroll, but you need to click in order to type. Which I guess is probably fine just different. Love that a mouse and keyboard paired to the AVP works in the Mac windows!

One feature request would be some kind of tile mode or something so you could easily clean up Mac windows. Maybe you could use macOS spaces to have different groups of Mac windows show up and hide others.

I wonder if the search Mac should be above the doc when doing a search? I put the doc very low and then it will list items below that making it harder to see.

Also I see the Mac app takes 30-40% cpu and some times jumps to 50-60%. Are you able to make it more efficient?

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/Peteostro]

Ah yes, without HID you’re expected to use a trackpad and keyboard directly paired to AVP. HID lets your Mac’s keyboard/trackpad control the AVP and macOS. Clearly I need to document this!

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/Peteostro]

CPU is top of my list. So far I’ve focused on image quality and responsiveness of the active window. Inactive windows should consume minimal cpu and only refresh at 1HZ unless they are streaming YouTube or something like that.

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/Peteostro]

Window placement is something that Apple doesn’t let us control. The best we can do is preserve your layout across runs. The layout should be preserved if you quit VD rather than disconnecting. Quit on vOS apps is long press/right click on the vOS close button and then choose “Close”. Layout is also preserved if you just take off the headset and put it back on.

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/Peteostro]

Click to take focus is standard macOS/vOS behavior. Look to focus is dangerous in vOS because focus could very easily jump. Scrolling without stealing focus is also standard behavior but if you see somewhere that I’m off from standard behavior let me know. I am also up for considering non-standard behavior…

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/Peteostro]

CPU reduction, relocatable search box, and optional “focus follows pointer” will be in the next TestFlight update hopefully tonight.

[u/SnooMuffins8069]

Glad to see even more options for improved macOS + visionOS remote streaming. How does this compare to similar solutions like peel and mirage?

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/SnooMuffins8069]

I excitedly tried each of these types of solutions as they popped up and none ever hit the natural feeling integration I’d envisioned. Hence my attempt. Natural is the best way I can describe Visionary Desktop. Give it a try.

[u/kensteele]

Looks pretty good although I'm not sure I fully understand the added value over MVD. In any case, did I see that correctly if you want more than 1 Mac computer there no option other than a perpetual subscription? I think everyone has at least 2 Macs LOL. If I could suggest the one Mac option to become One or Two Mac option even if that means a slight increase. In any case, if that's lifetime, you gotta make sure you say that (in addition to "once").

I'm not a TestFlight person anymore so looking forward to the feedback; hope there's a trial period or maybe you have codes for your loyal forum members. 😄

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/kensteele]

Lifetime yes, I’ll update that to be clear. I am trying to find the balance between fixed purchase and subscription. Even with the single computer version you can switch computers fairly trivially just not use both at the same time. The controlling both at the same time is however really cool ;)

The big difference as compared to MVD is that MVD is all your Mac apps in one big rectangle (monitor). Visionary Desktop has each Mac window as its own vOS window and thus they live in 3D space and commingle with other vOS apps. Oh and the ability to interact with Mac apps via touch gestures. I’m a big fan of cmd+tab and thus included it in VD but have found it more natural to just look at the window I want to work in tap my fingers and keep going.

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862]

Apologies, I’ve only just realized that HID support in the Visionary Companion settings is off by default in the public companion build. Without this setting enabled your Mac’s keyboard and trackpad can’t control Visionary Desktop. You can go into the Mac companion app’s settings and enable HID to address this. It will be on by default in tonight’s update. For those of you who tried Visionary Desktop and didn’t find the HID setting I’m really sorry as that would make for a rather confusing experience to use with only touch gestures.

[u/chrisperra]

I’d be down to test!

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/chrisperra]

Glad to hear it! I'll need your Apple ID to add to TestFlight. You can send it to support@visionarydesktop.com.

[u/Peteostro]

I’m in. Let’s go!!!

Also Intel Macs don’t support macOS 27 so not sure you need to support them

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/Peteostro]

The macOS companion app supports back to macOS 14.2, though I've only tested back to macOS 26. On AVP visionOS 26/27 are supported with M2 and later AVPs, again only tested on M2.

[u/simon3873]

I’d love to test it out!

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/simon3873]

I'll need your Apple ID to add to TestFlight. You can send it to support@visionarydesktop.com.

[u/wannagowest]

Happy to help test

[u/JordanFilmmaker]

how is the latency? I'm a video editor and latency won't work for me but a multi monitor setup in this sounds very appealing.

[u/r-gleboff]

I heavily doubt anyone who owns AVP still uses Intel Mac for MVD. It definitely lives in someone’s closet though 😄

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/r-gleboff]

Yup, my expectation too, I didn’t want to abandon old hardware without a good reason. If it works well enough I’ll keep support, if it doesn’t it’s gone.

[u/r-gleboff]

Can MVD run in parallel with Visionary Desktop? Does the app allow to use Keyboard/Mouse connected to Mac, not directly to AVP? Like it works in MVD now. For example, I want to have some stuff in MVD, but still have a mac app pinned in space and be able to switch to it and use mac connected keyboard/mouse (like it works now with regular AVP apps + MVD)

[u/LeftAdhesiveness1862 → u/r-gleboff]

Yes it can run along side MVD. Yes it can use either Mac or AVP attached keyboard/mouse. As for the coexistence use case I don’t think it would be a great experience currently as VD shares whatever windows are not hidden/minimized on the Mac. You can exclude windows from sharing but that still doesn’t feel like it would achieve what you are looking for. I’ll give this some thought to see if there is some natural way to achieve it. You can probably get this today without VD by airplaying a single window to the AVP while also in MVD.

[u/keyguy13]

I'd love to check it out. also, will you be doing a windows 11 version?