Control Deck

Every button you wish your desk had.

Your Android phone or tablet becomes the keys, faders, knobs and pads for your Mac or Linux computer. Its pages change with the app in front, every press clicks under your finger, and the picture pauses while you use it, so it’s light on the battery.

Coming toGoogle Play Free apps for Mac and Linux

Control Deck’s Browser page on a phone, linked to Studio Mac: fifteen keys for Back, Reload, Forward, Previous tab, New tab, Next tab, Close tab, Reopen tab, Address bar, Find, Zoom out, Zoom in, Bookmark, DevTools and Quit browser, each with its shortcut.

Next tab on the Mac

Flip through tabs, reload, find and zoom without reaching for the keyboard.

Comes up with Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Arc, Edge and Brave, each in its own keys.

Control Deck’s Media page on a phone, linked to Studio Mac: Previous track, Play / pause, Next track, Volume down, Mute, Volume up, Dimmer, Spotlight, Brighter, a volume knob, a brightness knob and a screenshot key.

Next track on the Mac

Skip a song, pause it or turn it down from across the room.

Plays Spotify, Music, VLC, a video in the browser: anything that answers a keyboard’s media keys.

Control Deck’s mixer on a phone, linked to Studio Mac: four channel strips, each a pan knob, a long fader, and mute and solo buttons. The third fader is up high and its solo is lit; the fourth is muted.

Fader 3 on the Mac

Ride four faders at once. Your music app sees a MIDI controller called Nightdesk.

Pages of their own for Logic Pro, GarageBand, Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio and REAPER; MIDI for any app that learns it.

Control Deck’s Games page on a phone, linked to a Linux computer: Library, Overlay (Shift+Tab), Full screen (F11), Push to talk (held down), Mute mic, Screenshot (F12), volume, Play / pause, Switch app, Quit game (held for a second) and three empty slots.

Overlay on Linux

Open the overlay, hold to talk, take a screenshot. Quit waits for a one-second hold.

Comes up with Steam, Heroic and Lutris on Linux, and Steam, the Epic Games Launcher and GOG Galaxy on a Mac.

Control Deck’s Claude Code page on a phone, linked to a Linux computer: Stop, Yes, Always, Mode, Rewind, New line, Compact, Context, Model, Transcript, To-dos and Clear (held).

Yes on Linux

Answer your coding agent with one tap while the tests run.

Comes up with VS Code, Cursor, Xcode and the terminals, and with Claude Code or Codex when one runs in front.

Folded or open

Keys only, or keys beside the trackpad.

One tap in the deck’s header picks Keys only, Trackpad and keys, or Trackpad only, remembered for each computer. Every page fills the screen, folded or open, and a spare phone or tablet can be the deck while another device shows the picture.

Control Deck on an unfolded phone: a glass trackpad on the left, and on the right the Music page with Play, Undo, Redo, a big nudge dial, a volume knob, Mute and six drum pads. — Open, beside the trackpad: the Music page’s nudge dial, volume and drum pads.

Control Deck’s Games page filling an unfolded phone: Library, Overlay, Full screen, Push to talk, Mute mic, Screenshot, volume keys, Play / pause, Switch app, Quit game, and three empty slots. — Open, keys only: the Games page, with three empty slots for your own.

Control Deck on a folded phone: twelve Claude Code keys on top (Stop, Yes, Always, Mode and more) and the trackpad under them. — Folded, keys over the trackpad: Claude Code’s answers and commands.

Control Deck’s Drums page on a folded phone: Cutoff, Resonance, Attack and Release knobs over sixteen drum pads named after General MIDI’s kit. — Folded, keys only: sixteen drum pads under four knobs, for any music app.

Pages that follow the app

The right keys, before you look for them.

When one of these comes to the front on your computer, its page comes up by itself, with its own keys said your computer’s way: ⌘ on a Mac, Ctrl on Linux. A game launcher’s page stays while the game it started is playing. Pin a page to keep it.

Code: VS Code, Cursor, Xcode
Terminals: Terminal, iTerm2, Ghostty, Warp, kitty, Alacritty, WezTerm, GNOME’s terminals, Tilix, Konsole
AI agents: Claude Code and Codex, when one runs in the terminal in front
Browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Arc, Edge, Brave
Chat: Slack
Music: GarageBand, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio, REAPER
Games: Steam, the Epic Games Launcher, GOG Galaxy, Heroic, Lutris

Yours to arrange

Start from a template, or a blank page.

Hold a key to move it and the others make room; resize it from its corner. A key can press a shortcut, type text, open an app with its real icon, send an AI agent’s command, or run a short macro. One layout works on every computer, or give one computer its own.

Dev
Terminal
AI
Browser
Media
Games
Mixer
Drum pads
DJ

TapIt goes as you lift your finger. A swipe between pages never presses anything.
Double tapTwo quick taps, for keys you’d rather not set off by accident.
HoldA ring fills round the key; it goes when the ring is full. Quit, Lock and Clear wait for a second.
While heldThe key stays down for as long as your finger does: push to talk, sprint, Shift while you click.
RepeatVolume, arrows and zoom go again and again until you let go.
HapticsKeys click like switches, dials tick with your speed, holds tick as they fill. Off, Light or Full.

MIDI

Your music app sees a controller called Nightdesk.

On a Mac, and on Linux computers with MIDI support, a port named Nightdesk appears while the deck uses it. Pads play notes with your touch’s force, faders and knobs send their own controls for MIDI learn, and they follow the app when it moves them. When you leave, every note you played is let go.

Some Linux systems need the snd-virmidi module first; Nightdesk says how. Works with GarageBand, Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio, REAPER and any app that learns MIDI.

What it replaces

The gadgets we didn’t buy.

Instead ofA programmable macro keypadabout $100 to $200As many keys as you like, on pages that follow the app
Instead ofA MIDI controllerabout $100 to $300Pads that play with your touch’s force, faders, knobs and jog wheels
Instead ofA trackpadfrom about $40A glass trackpad with momentum and the gestures you know

Typical US prices for new gear, rounded to where they start. A phone isn’t a keypad with mechanical switches, and some days you’ll want one.

Put the phone you have to work.

Free to try for 14 days. No account, no card. 8 Control Deck stories.

Coming to Google Play For Mac and Linux