← control freak

For your Mac

The other half.

Control Freak on your phone talks to a small agent that lives in your Mac's menu bar. This is that agent. It is free, and it is the only thing you need to install on the computer.

Download for macOS

0.1.0 · 2.3 MB · macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel

One universal build. Nothing to choose between.

Installing it

  1. Open the downloaded .dmg and drag Control Freak into Applications.
  2. Open it from Applications. macOS will refuse the first time — see below.
  3. Look for the Control Freak glyph in your menu bar, choose Pair a phone, and scan the code with the app.

macOS will block it the first time.

This build is not notarized by Apple, so macOS refuses to open it and says “Apple could not verify ‘Control Freak’ is free of malware”. Notarizing needs a paid Apple Developer account, which this project does not have yet.

Click Done, not Move to Trash. “Move to Trash” is the blue button, so it is the easy one to hit by reflex — and it deletes the app.

Then:

  1. Drag Control Freak from the disk image into Applications, if you have not already.
  2. Open it once, and let the warning appear. Click Done.
  3. Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security.
  4. Scroll to the Security section. There will be a line about Control Freak being blocked, with an Open Anyway button.
  5. Click it, then confirm with Touch ID or your password.

You only do this once. If you would rather clear it from the terminal:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Control Freak.app"

What it asks for, and why

It does not ask for your files, your microphone, or your camera, and it has no account to sign in to. Pairing is one scan of a QR code that carries the Mac's cryptographic fingerprint, which your phone pins from then on.

Verifying the download

If you want to check the file is the one published here, compare its SHA-256:

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/ControlFreak-0.1.0.dmg

15473508fd93c536f0c80935764d44c5523e5cc9027f8c5147b12d9423066d2e