Features

The deck

The deck is a grid of large, labeled buttons on your phone. Each button does one thing on the PC. Button types in 1.0:

• Launch — open a program, a file, a folder or a shortcut, exactly as if you'd double-clicked it on the PC.
• Website — open a URL in your default browser on the PC (not on the phone).
• Hotkey — send any key combination, like Ctrl+Shift+M to mute in a meeting app or Esc to back out of a menu.
• Media — play/pause, next, previous and stop, using the same media keys a keyboard has, so they work with Spotify, browsers, VLC and most players.
• Volume — up, down, mute or an exact level for the system volume.
• Text — type a saved snippet into whatever window has focus.
• Macro (Pro) — several of the above in order, with optional waits between steps.

Buttons are big on purpose. The deck is designed to be read at arm's length from a couch, with touch targets you can hit without looking closely — which also makes it comfortable for anyone with reduced dexterity or eyesight.

Voice remote

Tap the microphone button at the bottom of the deck and speak. SofaDeck understands more than 40,000 phrasings offline, plus every button, app and game you have: "volume 30", "open Spotify", "pause", "new tab", "snap left", "take a screenshot", "lofi beats on YouTube", "what's playing" and "open Spotify then volume 40" all work out of the box, and close-enough speech is matched to the nearest command. Your phone's browser turns speech into text; if it can't (an iPhone home-screen app, Firefox, no internet on the phone), your Windows PC recognises the speech offline instead. Say "what can I say" for the searchable list. If anything blocks the microphone, SofaDeck shows the exact phone or Windows setting to change. See the full voice command list.

Send to PC

The send button on the phone moves things to the PC over your home Wi-Fi, with no cable, cloud drive or phone app. Photos, videos and files land in Downloads › SofaDeck on the PC under their own names (never opened or run), with a progress bar for each one. Text you paste goes onto the PC's clipboard, ready for Ctrl+V; a link opens in the PC's browser; and "Get the PC's clipboard" brings what you copied on the PC back to the phone. On Android, install SofaDeck to the home screen and it appears in the Share menu. Files up to 10 MB on the free plan (50 MB on installs from before 1.0.18) are free; SofaDeck Pro sends any size up to 4 GB. The PC's settings can turn sending off for phones. Windows, 1.0.6 or later. Step by step: send files from your phone to your PC.

Live PC stats

Phone menu → PC stats shows the PC's vital signs as live bars, refreshed every 2 seconds: CPU usage, memory, free disk space, battery on laptops and uptime, plus load and temperature for each NVIDIA graphics card (read through NVIDIA's own driver tool). Bars turn amber when something runs hot or full. It's free and Windows-only; CPU temperature isn't shown because Windows doesn't expose it to normal programs. More: monitor PC temps from your phone and Windows Performance Monitor vs stat tiles on your phone.

Smart pages (Pro, Windows)

Smart pages make the deck follow what you're doing on the PC. In a page's settings, pick one or more apps (the phone lists the ones you used recently on the PC), and from then on the phone flips to that page by itself when the app comes to the front: your OBS page when you open OBS, your media page in the browser, a game's own page when it launches. Pages in other profiles work too. Clicking the desktop or taskbar doesn't change the page, and nothing switches while you're editing. Smart pages need SofaDeck Pro on Windows. More: Stream Deck smart profiles on your phone.

Sleep timer and screen off, stay ready

Phone menu → Sleep timer puts the PC to sleep, shuts it down or turns the screen off after 15 minutes to 12 hours, or switches to "stay ready" mode when the time is up. The phone shows a countdown with +15 minutes and Cancel, the PC's tray icon offers Cancel to anyone sitting at it, and the voice remote understands "sleep in 30 minutes", "shut down in an hour" and "cancel the sleep timer". Screen off, stay ready turns the display off while the PC stays awake, so the phone always connects instantly; opening SofaDeck on the phone or tapping a button turns the screen back on, and you can let the PC really sleep after a few hours without phone use. Both are free on Windows 1.0.7 or later. More: shutdown and sleep timers for Windows.

Wake your PC from your phone (Pro, Windows)

A browser can't send the network "magic packet" that wakes a sleeping PC, so SofaDeck makes the other routes easy. The PC's Wake & sleep page shows the network adapter (wired or Wi-Fi), its MAC and broadcast address, and whether Windows has Wake-on-LAN and Fast Startup on; Pro sets Wake-on-LAN up in one click after listing the changes, with Windows' own administrator prompt. One SofaDeck PC can find the others on your network and wake them from the phone menu, and when the phone can't reach a Pro PC it shows the ways to wake it: another SofaDeck PC, your router's Wake-on-LAN page, or a Wake-on-LAN app with the addresses filled in. Wi-Fi waking works only on some laptops; a cable is the reliable way. Guides: wake your PC from your phone and Wake-on-LAN on Windows 11.

Now playing and Presenter

Phone menu → Now playing shows the song or video playing on the PC (Spotify, a browser, VLC, the Media Player app and others that report to Windows) with the app's name and a progress bar, above the play, skip and volume buttons. Presenter is a big Next / Back clicker for PowerPoint, Google Slides and PDF viewers, with Start, From here, Black screen and End buttons and a talk timer that can buzz the phone at a set minute. Both are free on Windows. More: use your phone as a presentation remote.

Print Station (Pro, Windows)

Print Station turns the PC into a print server for your phone. Tap the printer button on the deck, choose a PDF or a photo (up to 25 MB), and SofaDeck prints it on the printer you picked, with no print dialog to click through. PDFs print at actual size, so a 4x6 shipping label comes out 4x6 inches instead of being shrunk to fit; photos are fitted to the page. It works with Rollo and other thermal label printers as well as ordinary office printers, and a test page with a 1-inch box shows the scale is right before you print a real label. Print Station needs SofaDeck Pro and Windows, and uses only Windows' own PDF and printing components. Step by step: print shipping labels from your phone.

Pairing without an app

There is no phone app to install, update or grant permissions to. SofaDeck shows a QR code on the PC; scanning it opens the deck in your phone's browser, where you type the PIN shown on the PC. Add the page to your home screen and it opens full-screen like an app. Because it's a web page, iPhone, Android phones and tablets all get the same deck.

What SofaDeck deliberately doesn't do

• No remote access over the internet. It works on your home network only. For access from anywhere, use a remote desktop tool — our guide to controlling a PC from a phone covers those.
• No screen mirroring. The deck shows buttons, not your PC screen. It's a control surface, not a remote desktop.
• No Linux version. SofaDeck runs on Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64-bit) and on macOS 11 Big Sur or later, on Apple silicon or Intel. On a Mac, LaunchBox import is replaced by OpenEmu, and hotkeys and typing need macOS's Accessibility permission.
• No account or ads; anonymous counts only if you opt in. See security.

Free and Pro