Documentation

Everything you need to get started with AirCC.

Quick Start

Works on macOS (Intel & Apple Silicon) and Linux (amd64 / arm64).

1
Sign up with Google
Tap Get Started on the homepage to create your account.
2
Add a device
Go to Devices, tap Add Device, and give it a name (e.g. "MacBook Pro"). Copy the device key — you'll need it in the next step.
3
Install the agent
Run this on the machine you want to control to install the agent:
```
$ curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brem-liu/aircc/main/install.sh | sh
```
Then start it with your device key:
```
$ aircc start --key YOUR_DEVICE_KEY --daemon
```
What does the installer do?
- Downloads the AirCC binary (~10 MB) for your platform
- Verifies the checksum
- Places it in /usr/local/bin
4
Connect
Tap the device to open a live terminal session. That's it — you're in.

CLI Reference

Command	Description
`aircc start --key <KEY>`	Start the agent in the foreground
`aircc start --key <KEY> --daemon`	Start as a background service (auto-starts on boot)
`aircc status`	Check agent daemon status
`aircc logs`	View agent logs
`aircc restart`	Restart the agent daemon
`aircc stop`	Stop the agent daemon
`aircc uninstall`	Remove the agent daemon service

aircc start --key <KEY>

Start the agent in the foreground

aircc start --key <KEY> --daemon

Start as a background service (auto-starts on boot)

aircc status

Check agent daemon status

aircc logs

View agent logs

aircc restart

Restart the agent daemon

aircc stop

Stop the agent daemon

aircc uninstall

Remove the agent daemon service

Tips & Best Practices

Terminal sessions & multiplexing

AirCC runs commands inside a PTY (pseudo-terminal). This works great for most use cases — running commands, editing files, tailing logs, etc. You typically don't need anything else.

However, if you want to start something in AirCC and later attach to that same session from your laptop's local terminal (or vice versa), use a terminal multiplexer like tmux or GNU Screen:

tmux — macOS

Install via Homebrew:

$ brew install tmux

$ tmux new -s work

$ tmux attach -t work

GNU Screen — Linux

Available by default on most Linux distributions.

$ screen -S work

$ screen -r work

Keeping your machine awake

If your machine goes to sleep, the AirCC agent loses its network connection and your device will appear offline. On macOS we use the built-in caffeinate command to prevent sleep by default, but some corporate laptops have power management policies that override it.

macOS — Amphetamine

If caffeinate is being overridden by your organization's power management policies, try Amphetamine from the Mac App Store — a free app that can keep your Mac awake even under managed profiles. It supports triggers, schedules, and "keep awake while app is running" rules.

Accessing localhost from your phone

Need to preview a dev server (e.g. localhost:3000) on your phone? Use a tunnel to expose it with a public HTTPS URL:

Cloudflare Tunnel

No account or sign-up required. Creates a temporary public HTTPS URL to your localhost:

$ brew install cloudflared

$ cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:3000

Gives you a URL like https://....trycloudflare.com — open it on any device. Alternatively, you can also use ngrok.

Security

AirCC establishes a direct peer-to-peer connection between your devices using WebRTC. All terminal data — keystrokes, command output, file contents — is encrypted with DTLS and never passes through our servers.

Our servers only handle signaling (helping your devices find each other) and account management. Once the P2P connection is established, we're out of the loop. Even when a TURN relay is used as a fallback, the relayed data remains end-to-end encrypted and opaque to the relay.

For more details, see our Privacy Policy.