Aardy for iPhone

Pairing with a Mac

What a Mac adds: 4K enhancement, music, weather, Shared Albums, and waking a sleeping TV.

Add Aardy for Mac and your phone becomes a remote for it. Your albums become sources on the Mac, packs are made there, and the TVs talk only to the Mac. You also get the features only a Mac can do: 4K enhancement, music, weather, Shared Albums, and waking a sleeping TV.

Pair

When the phone finds an Aardy Mac, it offers Pair with and the Mac's name. The Mac shows a 6-digit code in the Aardy menu-bar menu and in the manager under Settings, then Devices (use the manager on a Mac where nobody is logged in). Type it on the phone within two minutes.

  • Not now keeps the phone working on its own, with a banner to pair later.
  • Settings, then Devices in the manager lists every paired phone and when it was last seen. Revoke unpairs one.
  • After ten wrong codes, pairing pauses for a few minutes.

What changes

  • Your albums become sources on the Mac. If the Mac's own Photos library has the same album, the Mac syncs it and nothing is uploaded. Otherwise the phone uploads the originals and sends changes whenever you open Aardy.
  • Packs made in the manager appear on the phone with a Mac badge. You can assign any pack to any TV, and turn Enhance to 4K and Music on or off for a pack. For metadata, stacks and tags, choose Open Aardy Web, which asks for the admin password.
  • Mac asleep or away. The phone shows what the Mac last reported. Edits are kept and sent when the Mac is back.

Shared Albums

iCloud Shared Albums can only be used with a Mac. Apple keeps them at about 2048 pixels, so Enhance to 4K is on by default for them. When several people subscribe to the same Shared Album, only one copy goes on the Mac. If someone already added it, your phone shows On Studio, added by Erik's iPhone instead of a checkbox.

Moving your packs to a Mac

If you started with only the phone, pairing with a Mac offers Move your packs to the Mac's name:

  1. The phone recreates each of its packs on the Mac.
  2. Each TV keeps playing its phone packs while the Mac gets the photos. It switches to the Mac only when the Mac has the photos and the TV has downloaded the first ones.
  3. Packs from other people's phones on the same TVs are carried to the Mac by the TV itself, so nothing disappears. When that person next opens Aardy and pairs with the Mac, the packs become theirs again, and Aardy offers Upgrade to originals.

Later keeps everything as it is, with a banner. A TV can only be moved from the phone.