Portal Desktop — release artifacts

This repository hosts release artifacts only (notarized macOS builds) as GitHub Releases. The source code lives elsewhere.

Portal Desktop streams a Mac you own to a browser — real desktop pixels, hardware H.264, dual-stream 4:4:4 colour for crisp text, system audio, and full keyboard/mouse input, over WebTransport (same network) or WebRTC (remote-capable). One shared Apple VideoToolbox encode feeds every connected client.

Install (macOS, Apple Silicon · Sonoma 14+)

brew install --cask emrul/portal/portal-desktop

This installs the notarized Portal Desktop.app — a menu-bar app with no other dependencies. It encodes via Apple VideoToolbox, so no ffmpeg is required.

Using it

1. Launch Portal Desktop from Spotlight or Applications. It lives in the menu bar (top-right) — there's no Dock icon.
2. On first launch, grant Screen Recording when prompted (System Settings → Privacy & Security). For keyboard/mouse control of this Mac, also grant Accessibility. Because the app is signed, these grants persist across upgrades.
3. From the menu-bar icon, open the viewer (or copy the link) and open it in Chrome or Edge. On the same machine use https://127.0.0.1:8080 — "localhost" breaks WebTransport. For a remote browser, use the WebRTC viewer at …/webrtc.html.
4. Sign in when the browser connects: enter this Mac's login password (it's checked against the OS account and remembered for ~12h per browser). The connection is over a self-signed certificate — verify its fingerprint against the menu-bar Certificate Fingerprint… item if you want to be sure there's no interception.
5. Click the video to take control — keyboard, mouse, and two-finger scroll forward to the Mac. Click outside the video to release. Toggle 🔊 audio in the viewer's top bar (on by default).

Updating

Portal Desktop is a Homebrew cask, so updating is one command:

brew update && brew upgrade --cask emrul/portal/portal-desktop

brew update refreshes the tap so Homebrew sees the newest release; brew upgrade then downloads and installs it. Notes:

• Quit the app first. Click the menu-bar icon → Quit before upgrading, so Homebrew can replace the running bundle; relaunch from Spotlight afterwards.
• Your permissions carry over. Every build is signed with the same Developer ID, so the Screen Recording and Accessibility grants persist — no re-approval after an upgrade.
• Check versions (installed vs. latest available):

  brew info --cask emrul/portal/portal-desktop

• Force a clean reinstall if an upgrade ever looks off:

  brew reinstall --cask emrul/portal/portal-desktop

• Uninstall: brew uninstall --cask emrul/portal/portal-desktop.

Releases

• app-v* — the notarized menu-bar app (.dmg), installed by the cask above. There is always exactly one current app-v* release; brew upgrade tracks it.