How it works
No accounts. No API keys. No server setup. Just a direct encrypted link between your Mac and your iPhone.
Click the Claudaway icon in your menu bar. A QR code appears in a floating window.
Scan with your iPhone
That's the entire setup. The Mac app starts a local server, establishes an encrypted tunnel, and generates a pairing QR code — all with one click. It lives in your menu bar and runs quietly in the background.
Open the Claudaway iOS app and point your camera at the QR code. Encrypted pairing happens in seconds.
The QR code contains the tunnel URL and a one-time encryption key. When your iPhone scans it, both devices negotiate a shared 256-bit AES-GCM secret. From this point on, all communication is encrypted end-to-end. The pairing persists across sessions — you only need to scan once.
Type or dictate prompts, review diffs, and accept code changes — all from your phone.
You see the same output you'd see on your Mac — diffs, file paths, shell output. Tap Accept to apply code changes, Reject to discard them, or type follow-up instructions. Voice input works too: tap the mic, describe what you want, and send.
Under the hood
For the technically curious. Here's the full architecture in plain English.
Claudaway uses Cloudflare's cloudflared to create a tunnel from your Mac to the internet. This means your iPhone can reach your Mac even behind a corporate firewall, NAT, or VPN — without opening ports or configuring anything. The tunnel URL is random and temporary.
During QR pairing, both devices derive a shared 256-bit AES-GCM key. Every WebSocket message is encrypted before transmission and decrypted on arrival. The relay server (Cloudflare) sees only ciphertext. The key is stored in the iOS Keychain and the macOS Keychain, and persists so you don't need to re-pair each time.
On your Mac, Claudaway spawns Claude Code as a child process (or attaches to an existing one) and bridges its stdin/stdout over the WebSocket. Your iPhone sends prompts and control signals (accept, reject, stop) through the encrypted channel. The Mac app translates these into the appropriate Claude Code inputs.
If your phone loses connectivity (subway, elevator, switching from Wi-Fi to cellular), the app automatically reconnects when signal returns. The session state is preserved on your Mac — you pick up right where you left off. No work lost.
Each session maps to an independent Claude Code process on your Mac. The app manages process lifecycle, and the iOS app presents each session as a separate tab. Sessions can run different working directories, different prompts, and different Claude models simultaneously.
Requirements
iOS 16 or later. The Claudaway app from the App Store. Camera access for QR scanning.
Both devices need an internet connection. They don't need to be on the same network — the tunnel handles everything.