It's uncanny, I just vibe built something super similar. A server/client system to share individual windows as a resized app on the phone. I can select certain windows to render as if it was an app on either my Windows client, mac client, or iPhone client from a windows or mac server.
Glad to know I'm not the only one thinking about this. It also connects over tailnet.
For answering your question, MeowDisplay started as a fork of OpenDisplay which had the foundations for screen capture, virtual displays, encoding and the iPhone/iPad receivers built, I've credited OpenDisplay and its developer Philip in the README under "Built on OpenDisplay"
After that, I've taken a more phone-first approach, with quite a bit of work on the interaction, streaming and security layers.
So it's built on OpenDisplay and not just a UI layer over it, MeowDisplay is going in a different direction, If you only need the core second-display experience, or compatibility that the OpenDisplay project serves better, OpenDisplay is well worth a look.
I really want an evaluation of all of these classes of remote desktop systems and latency. Almost all of my remote display experiences have been mediocre due to lag. Maybe my tolerance is too low? How is the latency on this product?
Only RDP has felt truly responsive to me, and my understanding is that it cheats by not sending raster graphics and instead drawing primaries directly on the remote system and then updating the state based on the server?
I agree, I have benchmarks planned for the future.
As far as the latency on MeowDisplay, In my testing on Wifi, I measured around 14-17ms median from capture to receiver handoff, not e2e. I've also seen occasional spikes around 50-90ms and some stalled frames, you do notice the stalls but overall it's pretty responsive.
I've preferred to show the cursor as it is on the mac instead of rendering it locally on the phone which may make it feel smoother but the trade-off is that it may not accurately represent where the cursor actually is on the mac if things lag or hang.
Glad to know I'm not the only one thinking about this. It also connects over tailnet.
I'd have expected that to be declared in an announcement for this community.
For answering your question, MeowDisplay started as a fork of OpenDisplay which had the foundations for screen capture, virtual displays, encoding and the iPhone/iPad receivers built, I've credited OpenDisplay and its developer Philip in the README under "Built on OpenDisplay"
After that, I've taken a more phone-first approach, with quite a bit of work on the interaction, streaming and security layers.
So it's built on OpenDisplay and not just a UI layer over it, MeowDisplay is going in a different direction, If you only need the core second-display experience, or compatibility that the OpenDisplay project serves better, OpenDisplay is well worth a look.
Only RDP has felt truly responsive to me, and my understanding is that it cheats by not sending raster graphics and instead drawing primaries directly on the remote system and then updating the state based on the server?
As far as the latency on MeowDisplay, In my testing on Wifi, I measured around 14-17ms median from capture to receiver handoff, not e2e. I've also seen occasional spikes around 50-90ms and some stalled frames, you do notice the stalls but overall it's pretty responsive.
I've preferred to show the cursor as it is on the mac instead of rendering it locally on the phone which may make it feel smoother but the trade-off is that it may not accurately represent where the cursor actually is on the mac if things lag or hang.
Then again, it does depend on the connection.
EDIT: Yes, the feature is called Sidecar.