WispOS

Reaching your computer away from home

By default your phone reaches WispOS over your home Wi-Fi. To talk to Wisper from anywhere, give WispOS a secure address that reaches your computer: a tunnel or a private network you run.

Updated

Out of the box, your phone talks to WispOS over your home Wi-Fi. WispOS doesn’t run a relay server, so away from home your phone needs its own road to your computer. You have two choices.

Option 1: a private network (simplest)

Put your phone and computer on the same private network with a tool like Tailscale. Your phone then reaches your computer from anywhere as if it were at home. Nothing changes in WispOS: open the same link.

Option 2: an address from anywhere

If you run a tunnel to your computer, Cloudflare Tunnel for example, you can give WispOS its public https address:

  1. Point the tunnel at your computer’s WispOS phone port (Settings shows the port, 8477 by default).
  2. In Settings → Phone & sharing, paste the tunnel’s https address into Address from anywhere.
  3. The link (and QR code) Settings shows is now one that works anywhere. Scan it again on your phone.

Leave the field blank and the link stays Wi-Fi only.

WispOS doesn’t create the tunnel or touch your DNS; it only uses the address you give it. Running the tunnel is up to you.

Protecting a public address

A public address is reachable by anyone who finds it, so put a sign-in in front of it. With Cloudflare, that’s Cloudflare Access: people must sign in before the request ever reaches your computer, and the WispOS link’s own secret is still needed after that.

The iPhone Action Button and Shortcuts

The Ask Wisper shortcut runs in the background, where a sign-in page can’t be shown. If your address is behind Cloudflare Access, give WispOS a Cloudflare Access service token:

  1. In Cloudflare Zero Trust, Access → Service credentials, create a service token.
  2. On the Access application in front of your phone address, add a policy with the action Service Auth that includes that token.
  3. On the same application, set Session Duration to 1 month, so the phone’s own sign-in lasts a month instead of a day.
  4. Paste both halves of the token into Settings → Phone & sharing and press Check it.
  5. Open the WispOS app on your phone once at home, so it picks the token up.

The token stays between your computer and your phone, and the phone only sends it on the tunnel’s address.