Status: AVAILABLE (internal). Every Allternit Desktop and cloud computer runs the phone-remote server (surfaces/phone-remote/server) on 127.0.0.1:8477. The Desktop app starts and supervises it (surfaces/allternit-desktop/src/main/phone-remote-manager.ts). The Fabric desktop viewer and the phone remote proxy /hello and /frame to it; a phone viewer connects over WebSocket.

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When it captures

Capture runs only while someone wants frames:
  • It starts when a viewer connects, or on a /hello, /start or /frame request. The first /frame waits up to 3 seconds for a frame and answers 503 no frame if none arrives (poll again).
  • It stops after 15 seconds with no viewer connected and no request, and drops its cached frame, so nobody is served an old screen.
Until 2026-10-07 capture ran for the whole life of the process. On a Linux cloud computer that meant about ten screenshot processes a second with nobody watching, which slowed small computers and loaded their host.

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How it captures

On macOS a watchdog requires a frame at least every 5 seconds while capture runs. If frames stop, the server restarts the helper once, then exits so the Desktop app restarts it. /hello reports stale: true with an error when capture is dead.

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Where the change ships

The server is part of the Desktop app bundle, not a runtime package. Desktop users get changes with the next app build; cloud computers get them with the next cloud computer image.