How your phone reaches your host, on any network

Your agents build on your Mac at home, and you want to keep working with them wherever you go. At home your phone shares a network with the Mac. Out the door it is on mobile data, and in a hotel it sits behind a Wi-Fi that lets no direct connection through. Each of those places needs a different way to reach your Mac.

With Offsite you stay connected on any network. Pair your phone once, and Offsite finds the way from wherever you are. It tries every path it knows at the same time, takes the first that answers, and names it in the app. You never pick a connection.

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How it works

Three paths. On your own network the phone finds the Mac by Bonjour and reaches it in single-digit milliseconds. When both machines are on the same tailnet, your Tailscale carries the session in tens of milliseconds. The relay works whenever both sides can reach the internet, at around a hundred milliseconds.

All of them at once. When the network changes, the app tries every path at the same time, and the first one that answers carries the session. Step out the door and the home Wi-Fi is gone; your Tailscale answers. In a hotel Wi-Fi with no direct way through, the relay does.

The session keeps running. Your agents work on the host, so they carry on while your phone changes paths. When the phone is connected again, what they did in the meantime is on the screen.

From the relay back home, live. When the relay carries your session and you walk back into your own network, the app moves the session to the local path while it runs. It opens the new line and the session’s channel on it before it lets go of the relay, so nothing drops.

The pill names the path. In the app menu, the host’s card shows the path in use and its measured latency, such as LAN · 4 ms or Relay · 96 ms. When something feels slow, the pill tells you whether the network is the reason.

The relay cannot read a word. Your phone and your host both dial out to it on port 443, so your host needs no open port and no forwarding rule. Inside runs an SSH connection, encrypted end to end between your phone and your host, and the relay holds no key that could open it. It sees that a pairing connected, how many bytes flowed, and the IP addresses of both ends. Your apps pin the host key, so a relay cannot pose as your host. The relay is optional and switches per host. With it off, that host is reachable on your own network and over your tailnet.