Presenters, Couch Setups & Standing Desks: Your Phone as the Remote
Plenty of PC time is spent away from the keyboard: presenting to a room, a media PC on a TV, a second machine on a shelf, a standing desk, a recording
Plenty of PC time is spent away from the keyboard: presenting to a room, a media PC on a TV, a second machine on a shelf, a standing desk, a recording session where you cannot touch the mouse without ruining the take. The SlyPilot Phone Remote turns the Android phone you already carry into the controller for all of it, over your own Wi-Fi, with no app to install (you use Chrome on the phone).
SlyPilot Pro. The Phone Remote is part of SlyPilot Pro, an optional one-time purchase (US$39 for up to 3 personal PCs). The rest of SlyPilot (Touch Bar, snap, voice commands, workspaces, the agent API) is free.
🎤 Presenters & Trainers
The pain: a clicker advances slides and nothing else. When a question comes, you walk back to the laptop.
With the remote:
- The Presentation panel on the Pad tab has big previous / next buttons, Start (F5), From here (Shift+F5), End (Esc) and a timer.
- The Pad is a full trackpad: point at a link, scroll a document, flip virtual desktops with three fingers to move between your slides and a demo desktop.
- Win brings the demo window forward and snaps it left or right; Show on screen shows you exactly what the audience sees.
- Pair a colleague's phone with the "Run a presentation" preset: buttons, trackpad and media only, nothing else.
- Say Command to the Talk tab: "snap left", "go to desktop two", "mute" run as voice commands.
Tip: press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12 on the PC at any time to pause the remote. Every phone stops at once.
🔦 The Screen Itself: Spotlight, Drawing and a Countdown
Not every talk needs a remote. Some need the screen to help: a spotlight that dims everything but the circle round your pointer, a ring that follows your clicks, a bar that shows the shortcuts you press (never what you type), an on-screen countdown, and a drawing board to draw an arrow or a diagram on whatever is shown. Presenting mode sets all of it up with one word and puts everything back afterwards. All free. Presenter tools → · Drawing board → · Teachers & Trainers →
🛋️ Media PC & Couch Control
The pain: the PC is connected to the TV; the keyboard is across the room.
With the remote:
- Home has a real volume slider, mute, play / pause / previous / next, and a command search for everything SlyPilot can do.
- The Pad moves the pointer and clicks; Talk types search terms by voice (hold to talk, then release) or from the phone keyboard as you type.
- The Screen tab shows what is on the PC if you are in another room, with the pointer drawn on it.
- Push a link from the PC to the phone with Send Clipboard to Phones, or send a photo from the phone to the PC with Tools → Send files and photos.
- Tools → PC power: lock, screen off or sleep when you are done.
🧍 Standing Desks, Whiteboards & Walking Calls
The pain: you work standing, walking, or at a whiteboard; the mouse and keyboard are a reach away.
With the remote:
- Dictate by holding the Talk button: your words are typed into the window in front on the PC, using SlyPilot Pro's offline AI dictation and your word list.
- Live typing lets you type on the phone and see it appear on the PC.
- The AI tab fixes, polishes, shortens, summarizes or translates the text you selected on the PC.
- When a coding agent needs your approval, the request appears on your phone as Allow once / Deny, so a long agent run does not stall while you are away from the desk. See MCP & Agent Automation.
🎬 Streamers & Recording Sessions
The pain: touching the PC while recording moves windows, steals focus, or makes noise.
With the remote:
- Your own Touch Bar buttons (scene hotkeys, push-to-talk, mic mute, a macro of your choice) are on the Home tab, per program, and hold buttons stay held while you hold the phone button.
- The microphone mute shows its live state.
- Use Screen → View mode to watch the PC without any risk of clicking by accident, or Touch mode to click through a setup from across the room.
- The Touch Bar is built not to take keyboard focus from the program in front, so pressing a button does not interrupt what you are typing or recording.
🖥️ A Second PC or a Headless Machine
The pain: a shelf PC, a lab machine or a home server that needs a nudge now and then.
With the remote:
- Screen gives you a picture (live if you like) of any of its monitors, with Touch mode to click, Keyboard to type, and Keys for Win, Alt+Tab and Ctrl, Alt or Shift combinations (not Ctrl+Alt+Del, which no program can send).
- Send files and photos to it, fetch its clipboard, and lock / sleep / restart it, with a 20-second window to cancel a restart or shutdown.
- Windows does not allow normal programs to control administrator-level windows or the lock screen, so the remote cannot either. See the limits in the guide.
♿ Reducing Reach and Strain
The remote is also a comfort tool: a phone on the arm of a chair or a stand can handle the mouse, the keyboard and dictation when sitting at the desk is painful. Combined with hands-free voice control, it gives you another way to reach the PC.
What You Need
A PC running SlyPilot with SlyPilot Pro, an Android phone on the same Wi-Fi, and Chrome on the phone (the only browser it was tested with). Pairing takes about a minute: set it up →