About

pearPad is a little application that turns your iPhoneTM/iPod touchTM into a remote trackpad and keyboard for your Mac or PC over WiFi. This comes in handy for example if you connect your it to an HDTV to show off some pictures, use Front Row, browse the web, or give a presentation. pearPad gives you almost full control into your palm.


What’s even cooler, pearPad features swipe-gestures- (quick strokes across the iPhone/iPod touch screen) and shake-detection that you can map to any key-combination you like. Progressing your presentation by shaking your phone, zooming in and out on your screen, controlling Front Row (if your’re on a Mac) by swipes are just some ideas of what you could do.


Of course pearPad also supports mouse cursor positioning (like a trackpad), scrolling with two fingers, text-entry using the default virtual keyboard, or single key-presses or combinations (like Command, Shift, Control) provided by a special Keys-pad, for example for sending keyboard-shortcuts. There is even a customizable pad with extra-large buttons for the most often used key combinations.


pearPad consists of two parts:

The application running on the iPhone/iPod touch, which is available at the AppStore and the application running on your computer - called pearPad Remote. This application listens to and interprets commands sent to it by pearPad. See the downloads on the right side to get the right version for your system.


Once pearPad Remote is launched and activated on your Mac or PC, pearPad on the iPhone / iPod touch will automatically find your computer in your local network using Bonjour2. Of course, you can also specifiy an IP-Address the old fashioned way if you need or want to. Just make sure, your firewall does not block the pearPad port (can be configured too, by default it's TCP/UDP 59999).


What pearPad is not:

pearPad is not a VNC solution, it's a plain one-way input mean (i.e. it does not even try to display the screen-content of your Mac or PC on your tiny little mobile device’s screen).

pearPad does not encrypt the input data sent to your computer - so don't use it for sensitive or top secret data.



1 Java Runtime Environment 1.5 or higher required. Only one-dimensional scrolling is supported on Windows and Linux.

2 Bonjour is required for the auto-discovery feature. See:
  http://www.apple.com/bonjour

pearPad V2.2

Control your Mac or PC from your palm: turn your iPhone or iPod touch into a remote trackpad and keyboard.

Apple, the Apple logo, iPod, Mac, Mac OS X and iTunes are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in

the U.S. and other countries. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc. Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Inc.


©2008-2009 pearworks (Walter Ritter)

Downloads

Just pick the one that best fits your system.

  1. -pearPadRemote for Leopard here (326kB).

  2. -pearPadRemote for Tiger here (326kB).

  3. -pearPadRemote for Windows TM 1

  4. -pearPadRemote (platform independent jar file) 1

What’s new in pearPad V2.2

  1. -New two-finger context-click

  2. -Option to disable display sleep

  3. -minor bug fixes

What’s new in pearPad Remote Mac V2.1.2?

  1. -Fixes a bug in the Mac-version that could cause pearPad Remote crashes on reconnect-attempts.

What’s new in pearPad Remote Mac V2.1.1?

  1. -Fixes a bug in the Mac-version of key-combinations involving the Shift key and introduces a new contextual menu for the key-combinations-view with new options. This update only concerns the Mac-version.

What’s new in V2.1?

  1. -More accessible Keys view. Bigger buttons, divided qwerty-layout, there is also a dedicated number-view for number input, and a function-keys-view...

  2. -The Keys-view now automatically adjusts for the keyboard-language setting on the Mac.

  3. -More streamlined settings and general interface tuning.

  4. -Choose your favorite picture from the photo library as trackpad-background. You can also control its opacity.

  5. -Minor bug fixes and enhancements.