Remotype Your phone is the keyboard now

Keyboard, trackpad, Both mode, and finding and connecting to a computer on your network are free forever, with no ads, no account and no tracking. Everything else is Premium: free for 14 days on every new install (the trial is per device, and a reinstall does not restart it), then 30 minutes a month, which only counts down while a Premium feature is actually in use. Prices are USD; stores show local equivalents.

Monthly ($4.99) and annual ($39.99) plans renew until you cancel in the store's subscription settings; access then runs to the end of the paid period, and the store handles refunds. The Eternal License is $99.99 once, with no recurring charge. Keyboard and trackpad never need a payment of any kind.

The Eternal License (previously sold as Lifetime — same store item) is $99.99 once and unlocks the current major version, Remotype 1, for good: every 1.x update is included, with no renewal and no expiry. Compatibility fixes for new macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android releases are free for as long as Custavia exists; only new features go into the next major version. A license is tied to the store account that bought it, so it covers that account's Android and iPhone apps but does not carry from the App Store to Google Play, or back.

Every 1.x update is already included. When a next major version ships, Eternal License holders pay 70% of the then-current price — a 30% discount. You are never forced to upgrade: the version you licensed keeps working and will not be switched off.

It is an iPhone app; an iPad can install it and run it in iPhone compatibility mode. It connects over Wi-Fi, with the free Remotype Host on the Mac, Windows or Linux computer. An iPhone cannot act as a Bluetooth keyboard because Apple does not allow it, so the path that installs nothing on the computer is Android only. The one iPhone feature that needs no host is the Android TV remote, which talks to the TV directly.

On Android over Bluetooth, no — the computer sees an ordinary Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. On iPhone, and for anything that needs data back from the computer (screen mirror, clipboard, the Spotlight overlay, casting, computer vitals), you run the free Remotype Host: Mac or Windows for those features, Linux for input. It is a menu-bar or tray app with no account and no updater. Setup instructions are at remotype.custavia.com/product-help.

The no-install path is a real Bluetooth keyboard, so the PC needs a Bluetooth radio with Bluetooth switched on. Managed corporate builds often disable it by policy, or ship without a radio at all. If that is your machine, the only other route is Wi-Fi to the free Remotype Host — which is an install, and that is the thing your policy may not allow. Worth checking before you buy.

Pairing shows a code on the computer’s own screen and the phone has to enter it, on Mac, Windows and Linux alike — being on the same Wi-Fi is never enough. A headless mini-PC, NUC or home server therefore needs a display, or a remote-desktop session, for that one connection. After it is paired the phone reconnects on its own, and every session is sealed with AES-256-GCM.

The Linux host does keyboard, trackpad, media keys, non-US layouts with dead keys, and the full trust layer — pairing code and AES-256-GCM sessions — on both X11 and Wayland, because it injects input through uinput. Screen mirror, the Spotlight overlay, clipboard sync and casting are out of scope on Linux by design, and computer audio needs a Mac host. The Linux build is unsigned, and open source like the others.

Remotype Host draws the spotlight, laser, ink, shapes and blank screen on the computer's own screen, not on the phone, so they appear in screen shares and in recordings when you share the whole screen rather than a single window or a browser tab. The same goes for the countdown timer overlay. Spotlight is Premium and works with Mac and Windows hosts, not Linux.

It is a different kind of tool. A hardware clicker needs no software on the computer, and Remotype matches that only on Android over Bluetooth, where slide keys and the on-phone timer work with nothing installed. What a clicker cannot do: draw a spotlight, ink, shapes, a blank screen and a countdown onto the computer's own screen so a remote audience sees them (Mac and Windows hosts), and be a full keyboard and trackpad for the rest of the day.

Universal Control shares the keyboard and mouse you are already sitting at with a second Mac or an iPad, on the same Apple Account; it does nothing for a Windows PC and cannot turn a phone into the keyboard. Sidecar makes an iPad a second display for a Mac — pixels travel out, typing does not travel back. iPhone Mirroring and Windows Phone Link run your phone on the computer's screen, driven by the computer's own keyboard, which is the opposite direction. Remote desktop apps stream the computer to the phone but still need you to type on a phone-shaped screen. Remotype does the plain thing none of them do: the phone in your hand becomes the keyboard, trackpad and remote for a computer or TV a few feet away, across macOS, Windows, Linux, Android and iOS.

Two ways, both Premium. For Android TV and Google TV, the phone talks to the TV directly over Wi-Fi after a 6-digit code shown on the TV — D-pad, OK, number pad, back, home, power, volume and text entry — from iPhone or Android, with no Remotype Host involved. For any other TV, or an iPad, that accepts a Bluetooth keyboard, an Android phone pairs over Bluetooth with nothing installed on the device.

Remotype Host for macOS, Windows and Linux is open source under Apache-2.0 at github.com/Custavia/remotype-host, so you can read exactly what runs on your computer. The phone apps are not open source; they come from the App Store and Google Play.

Keystrokes and pointer moves go from your phone to your computer over your own network, or over Bluetooth on Android, and nowhere else: there is no cloud relay, no analytics and no account, and the host makes zero internet connections. If the computer is on another network, Connect-by-IP (a Premium feature) carries the same traffic over your own Tailscale or VPN link. The one time the app itself needs the internet is the trial activation, which stores a salted hash of a device identifier and the start date.