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Veency: VNC Server for iPhone

by Erica Sadun Sep 18th 2008 at 2:30PM

We recently got a tip over to this It's Just Poison post about Veency for jailbroken iPhones from Jay "Saurik" Freeman, the author and maintainer of Cydia. Veency provides a VNC remote desktop server for your iPhone, allowing you to connect to the shared screen of your handheld from any VNC client (Apple Remote Desktop, Chicken of the VNC, and more).

I downloaded a copy to my iPhone, rebooted and gave it a whirl to see how well it worked using Chicken of the VNC on my Mac.

From first go, it did what it promised: offering tap-interpretation of my Mac-based mouse clicks as iPhone-sourced finger taps. The current mouse position on the Mac was echoed as a small "x" on the iPhone, so I could always see where the virtual finger was.

I had no problems launching apps, selecting buttons, dragging and so forth. Obviously, no two-finger gestures were available. There were slight gaps between my Mac-based interaction and the iPhone response, but nothing significant that interfered with work.

Video response was weaker. It had significant lag time and hangups, as you can see in the demonstration below. This means that you're not going to be able to use this as the perfect video Stevenote-style output solution. Also, any actual on-screen video from the iPod video application was not echoed at all.

The screen went dead whenever my iPhone's autolock kicked in. I was unable to wake it back up from the Mac, although I could (obviously) from the iPhone itself [update, this post at iPhone Hacks indicates you can get around this with the middle and right buttons -- thanks Alex]. One thing that did work particularly well was text alerts, which displayed whether the iPhone was awake or asleep. As Adam of It's Just Poison wrote and I confirmed, "Now I can have my phone charging in the other room, and when I receive a new txt, I don't have to get up to check my phone (or go upstairs/downstairs)". As you can see on the screenshot at the top of this article, the text displayed perfectly.

But the very best feature of Veency is this: it handles text entry. This means you can load up notes and type directly onto the iPhone. Boom!



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We recently got a tip over to this It's Just Poison post about Veency for jailbroken iPhones from Jay "Saurik" Freeman, the author and...
 

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Joe

Can anyone comment on the battery life implications of installing this service? Is there anyway of selectively enabling/disabling it?

October 22 2008 at 4:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Joe's comment
Robert Nienburg

great question. did you ever get an answer?

December 10 2008 at 6:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dennis Mattei

Heres a Demo of the app that i hope shows off what it can do a little more then the video on this page!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4juIVX__TDg

(my iphone blog coming soon to iphone.bizzaregood.info )

September 22 2008 at 7:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Pob

Has anyone had any success with getting this to work with Apple remote desktop? I see absolutely no reason why it shouldn't but have exhausted every option and still no luck. It works fine with Chicken but id rather use ARD

I can see the iphone at its correct I.P address but when i try to observe/control or anything for that matter all i get is the connecting status bar where as on the other hand Chicken connected instantly and with no problem. Maybe ARD does not support this somehow?

Running ARD version 3.2.2
iPhone 2.1

Any ideas?

September 22 2008 at 5:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
frank.lowney

This is a dream come true for those of us charged with the task of designing training and support systems for projects whose success depends upon non-technical users quickly picking up innovative applications on the iPhone and iPod touch. This is a great start and one can produce some decent tutorials in some areas right now. Here's my first shot at this using ScreenFlow and Keynote to dress things up.

http://hercules.gcsu.edu/~flowney/screencasts/The_iPod_touch_ScreenCast.mov

As you can see, my primary interest is in controlling the iPhone normally but capturing that from a Mac screen. Time permitting, I will endeavor to do another screencast with animated overlays showing how finger gestures might be portrayed.

September 21 2008 at 7:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
spliffalicious

This is INCREDIBLY USEFUL for me...
I have an iPhone with a dead band of touchscreen that just so happens to be where most apps like to place their "okay" or "accept" buttons when entering user info and registration.

This has just brought functionality back to 80% of the apps I've had to walk away from once I had the screen issue.

Thanks Jay!

September 20 2008 at 11:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
brady

This doesn't work at all for me I installed it and my computer wont recognize it.

September 19 2008 at 7:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to brady's comment
spliffalicious

its not really "on your computer"- it's in the iphone.

-have you installed a VNC client on your computer? If so, open THAT and enter the iphone's ip (found in settings>wifi>then click the blue circle for the signal you're on... and use your iPhone's ip in the "host" field of the VNC client...

g'luck


September 20 2008 at 11:29 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
doug

You can unlock the phone from the black screen by right clicking and then doing the drag to unlock

September 19 2008 at 11:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kd

Like it, but...

When travelling, I noticed someone or some network tried to connect with my iPhone. It's easy to dismiss that request, but it would be easier if Veency had an icon to switch on/off the service.

September 19 2008 at 3:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to kd's comment
Jay Freeman (saurik)

That's /awesome/! ;P Future versions will have both that option and, even better, the ability to use password authentication instead (which is preferable as then you have the convenience of leaving the service usable while not having to actually verify each incoming connection).

September 19 2008 at 5:05 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jay Freeman (saurik)

For the record, if you middle-click it will press the lock button (which you can use to turn on/off the phone if it auto-locks). If it actually goes into suspend, though, then it is unlikely to be in a good state to even hear your commands from the computer. I'm going to fix this all in a future build of Veency.

September 19 2008 at 2:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Andy Bewernick

It works but I would still love for an iPhone screen caster on the Jailbroken side. Probably can't do it through the SDK.

September 18 2008 at 11:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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