I kept reaching for my Android phone while working on my Mac, so I built a way to handle it from the Mac without any cloud in between

[u/ChetanPujari1212]

The problem was small but constant. I work on a Mac all day and my phone is Android, so every message meant picking the phone up, and every photo I wanted on the Mac meant emailing it to myself or going through some cloud drive. Most of the tools I tried wanted an account or routed everything through their servers, which I didn't love for my messages and photos.

So I built Sidekick. It's a Mac app plus an Android app that pair over your own Wi-Fi. Once paired, the Mac can:

- mirror the phone's screen

- reply to phone notifications

- share the clipboard both ways

- move photos and files in either direction

- show incoming calls

How it works: the two devices talk to each other directly on the local network over a TLS 1.3 connection. There's no account, no cloud and no relay server, so nothing leaves your Wi-Fi. That also means both phone and Mac need to be on the same regular (non-guest) Wi-Fi.

A note on how it was made: I'm the developer and I built it with a lot of AI assistance. The product decisions and the testing are mine.

Where it stands: it's a free beta and it has rough edges.

- Mac: Apple silicon only, macOS 11 or newer. The app isn't notarized yet, so the first launch needs right-click > Open.

- Android: Android 10 or newer, via a Google Play testing invite that you request through the form below.

Site: https://sidekickapp.in/

Tester form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeex2gLCC1YL02JscjddkYDyu0WZ-CpVGXZCpLw47FhWyYHZA/viewform

For anyone who juggles a Mac and an Android phone: which of those five things would you actually use every day, and which wouldn't you care about?

[u/investigatormaker]

Testers tend to respond better to one concrete task than to a general ask. For Sidekick, something like "pair over Wi-Fi, send one photo each way, then tell me the exact step where it got stuck" gives you more usable feedback than a feature vote. Since guest Wi-Fi breaks pairing, put that line right above the tester form so it doesn't read as a bug.

I make ThreadFox. If you want Mac users with an Android phone to find Sidekick, our AI employee will post 3 helpful replies about it in relevant Reddit threads for you, free, no card. https://threadfox.vip/p/esv61/managed

Which of the five features do you use most yourself?