It’s no secret that the biggest strength of Apple’s ecosystem is the seamless cross-device connectivity it offers. Yet, despite commanding the world’s biggest mobile-computing duopoly, Apple hasn’t offered two-way control for iPhones and Macs to remotely operate each other. It’s a shame, because given Apple’s security-first approach, it’s in the best spot to offer such a facility.
The situation only changed last year, but only halfway through. With the arrival of iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, Apple finally introduced iPhone Mirroring. However, there’s still no equivalent that allows you to access and control your Mac desktop on your iPhone. Or an iPad. Some third-party options have existed, though, but haven’t really been stellar.
Chrome Remote Desktop offers a free, straightforward path for remote control, but it lacks features such as file transfer or chat. Moreover, it ties you to the Chrome browser. Other options such as Microsoft Remote Desktop and TeamViewer offer a robust set of features, but they either come at a premium, or lock the best features behind a subscription.
Enter Oppo with its O+ Connect system. It lets users seamlessly manage (edit, organize, and view) local smartphone files from their PC. The platform also allows seamless transfer of files between the two systems, as well. With the introduction of Find N5, the world’s slimmest phone, Oppo introduced an unexpectedly rewarding Remote PC control system for Macs. After having used it for a few weeks, I can say it’s quite a revelation.
A most suitable form factor
When trying to remotely control a desktop, the biggest nuisance is cramped controls. On a traditional slab-style phone, you have to deal with a cramped desktop view and ugly pillarboxing. That’s inevitable, because of the disparity between the aspect ratio of a desktop and a smartphone screen.
A foldable phone such as the Oppo Find N5 gets as close to “natural” desktop experience as it gets. I often use an iPad mini as a secondary monitor for my MacBook Air, but the disparity in aspect ratio often results in a weird experience, especially when the tablet is in landscape mode.
With the iPad Pro, app windows feel more natural and don’t always require resizing. On the Oppo Find N5, you have a much bigger canvas to handle macOS windows. In apps such as Docs, Asana, and web browsers — or essentially any app where text is king — the bigger 8.1-inch canvas really helps.
Even when I was not remotely mirroring my MacBook Air, and only wanted access to the files, the file manager view was not cramped. I could easily spot the necessary documents in the tile preview, and barely ever ran into a scenario where I had to squint hard or peek closer to the screen.
Another crucial benefit is the control dexterity. I’ve tried a few remote access tools so far, and a majority of them do a shoddy job of handling touchpad gestures, mouse clicks, and keyboard inputs. You can only do so much on a smartphone screen, either way.
On the Oppo Find N5, the lower half of the screen transforms into a giant touchpad, or opens a full-fledged Mac keyboard. This on-screen touchpad supports the core suite of multi-finger gestures, such as two-finger swipe, drag and move, four-finger pinch, and three-finger slide. Thankfully, they work just fine.
Oppo has also implemented a suite of quick controls that let you access Mission Control, Launchpad, and dock with a single tap. There are similar controls available for putting the remote Mac to sleep mode, powering it off, restarting, or just sending files from the phone to your Mac’s local storage.
When not in use, all these quick controls are neatly hidden within an expanding shelf, disguised as a single icon. The overarching idea is that you have the core shortcuts at your disposal, without having to switch between keyboard and touchpad. Of course, all your keyboard shortcuts work just fine.
A smooth experience
One of my biggest concerns with remotely accessing a Mac on a mobile phone was reliability and the technical learning curve. Thankfully, Oppo has done a fantastic job of keeping the whole pipeline clean. The only two requirements are the creation of an Oppo ID account, and downloading the companion O+ Connect on the Mac.
The latter needs a healthy few permissions, including accessibility and local file access. Once you’re past the first setup, all you need to do is make sure that your Mac is powered on, and connected to the internet, preferably, a high-speed internet connection.
When my MacBook Air was at home and linked to a broadband internet with an average 200-300Mbps bandwidth, I was able to chat with my colleagues on Slack, send over a few images, and access my Workspace progress without any fundamental problems.
While performing all these tasks, the Oppo Find N5, on the other hand, was tethered to a cellular hotspot from my iPhone. Of course, typing on a virtual full-sized Mac keyboard is a bit finicky, but with a bit of patience, it gets the job done.
I was even able to get the remote access working when both the devices were connected to a cellular hotspot. The only downside was that the remote Mac experience was not nearly as fluid when connected to a low-bandwidth cellular hotspot, especially when it comes to switching between app windows.
Cursor latency wasn’t much of a problem, but as you shift to compute-intensive tasks, sporadic jitters happen. For example, light photo editing is fine, but if remote connection is not speedy, don’t expect a buttery-smooth experience in Lightroom. Also, make sure that low-data mode is disabled when using a cellular hotspot on either end of the remote relay.
There are a few technical snags, too. For example, when remote access is active, Apple’s Private Relay safety system is disabled. I also noticed the cursor doesn’t always recognize window edges, which makes resizing a tad frustrating. You can, however, safely access the eight preset tiling options by hovering the cursor over the green maximize button. They’re more than enough to get some remote work done.
Hey Apple, take notes
Apple’s ecosystem is notoriously locked. So, it’s already quite some monumental surprise to see that I could simply drag and drop files across the Oppo Find N5 and my M4 MacBook Air miles away from my workstation. But being able to access my Mac remotely, without any fundamental limitations — that too, on an Android phone — is nothing short of a technology shock.
I loved the convenience, of course. It’s not perfect, but the few rough corners can be polished with ease. A few of the limitations are, well, insurmountable, due to Apple’s gated ecosystem approach. The O+ Connect platform is not an alternative to real Mac computing, but more like a stop-gap solution that puts your Mac in the palm of your hand.
It just works, as long as you know the limits of serious computing on an 8-inch screen, giving you a full-fledged virtual Mac. But more than anything, it’s a message to Apple that it can do a lot more with its own hardware ecosystem. The tech stack is already there. There is no dearth of firepower. The talent pool it commands is arguably the best in the world.
All it needs is intent to pull that off. Maybe, the upcoming foldable iPhone will embrace the path laid out by the Oppo Find N5. Or maybe, one of those powerful iPads with a desktop-class processor will finally embrace a hybrid Mac existence, even though it’s just a remote-controlled environment.
I’ll take both, or either one!
