Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, Jailbreak/pwnage
Veency: VNC Server for iPhone
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!
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
matthieu said 2:59PM on 9-18-2008
I just tried veency and it is working great. Video lag is not that bad. maybe because my iphone is right next to my laptop but VNC is not a really fast protocol anyway. can't wait for future update where we can turn off the server.
Reply
Jash Sayani said 6:54AM on 9-19-2008
It worked just great. However, an app icon with preferences like password protection would be really great !
Ryan Trevisol said 3:15PM on 9-18-2008
What I want is the other way around, Apple Remote Desktop for my iPhone.
Reply
dastranger said 3:26PM on 9-18-2008
They already have a number of apps that does this. They're even in the iTunes app store. Just do a search on VNC.
Michael Rose said 3:40PM on 9-18-2008
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?entity=software&media=all&submit=seeAllLockups&term=vnc
Jaygo44 said 5:45PM on 9-18-2008
I just downloaded veency from cydia, now I dont see the icon on the status bar or anything, but I know its installed. I have TightVNC installed on my laptop running MS XP Pro. What do i do from there? Any help is greatly appreciated.
oh and btw i have Jaadu running in the background of my pc as well in case this poses a problem.
Reply
Brian said 6:12PM on 9-18-2008
It has no icon, it runs as a service i.e all the time. Just find your ip address on the iphone and vnc into that.
Think Adrian said 3:49PM on 9-18-2008
Why not echoing as a mouse pointer? You are using the mouse to interact with the "virtual" iPhone, right?
Reply
Ryan Schmidt said 3:50PM on 9-18-2008
I find it odd that the video demonstrated a completely useless idea for this app. I would love to see how easy it is to text and what not from it. I would love to be able to view and respond to texts even while my phone is in the other room. Is this possible?
Reply
Brian said 6:12PM on 9-18-2008
Yes you can
caleb said 9:07AM on 9-19-2008
@Brian
I know you can. It pretty clearly explained that in the write up. I would have liked to have seen it in the demo video. I thought for sure the video would have shown control from the computer side. I also would have liked to see how it handled rotation if at all. The video demo was just dumb.
Mike Stanton said 4:20PM on 9-18-2008
How do you hit the Home button? I've got the screen working, and apps are working fine, but I can't figure out how to hit the Home button.
Using Chicken of the VNC 2.0b4, iPod Touch 2.1
Reply
matthieu said 4:25PM on 9-18-2008
right click to go back to the home screen.And you can also directly input text with the keyboard.
Mike Stanton said 4:34PM on 9-18-2008
Cheers! Works like a charm!
Nefarious said 4:43PM on 9-18-2008
Works great! Looking forward to the various updates Jay does.
Reply
Scott said 5:05PM on 9-18-2008
Awesome! I was just dreaming of something like this yesterday. I used to use DotPocket for PocketPC for remote control via USB, but this will do nicely. Nothing better than using a full PC keyboard from my desk to type out SMS messages.
Reply
andyp said 6:12PM on 9-18-2008
It would be great to see an offical one of these apps via the AppStore
Reply
jopari said 7:40PM on 9-18-2008
VNC by it's definition is a background app so there's absolutely no chance it'll get in the App Store unless Apple changes guidelines.
oli4 said 7:46PM on 9-18-2008
how can I make connection via my mac, I tied JollysFastVNC but it sais: could not make connection. I just typed:
Name: iPhone
Network Address: vnc://ipadress
Poort: 5900
Reply
Alex McKee said 8:05PM on 9-18-2008
Instead of putting vnc://youriphonesip you should just put youriphonesip because Jolly is smart enough to not need the vnc://.