Connection & troubleshooting

The phone talks straight to your Mac — no relay to hide behind — so the connection card always tells you the truth. Here's how to read it, and what to do on the rare day it won't connect.

The states, honestly

• Online — connected and polling; your fleet is live.
• Reconnecting — a blip; the phone is hunting for the Mac and usually recovers in seconds.
• Connect — the phone stopped auto-retrying (after ~a minute) or you disconnected on purpose. Tap to resume.
• Offline — the Mac hasn't been heard from at all: asleep, shut down, or Termary isn't running.
• Not connected — you hit Disconnect; the Mac is fine, the phone just isn't polling it.

When it won't connect — in order

1. Is Termary running on the Mac? The phone talks to the app, not the machine — the app must be open.
2. Is the Mac awake? A sleeping Mac answers nothing. Lid open, or plugged in with sleep off, for long runs.
3. Same network? On LAN mode, phone and Mac must share a Wi-Fi (or a Tailscale network). Off-network needs remote access turned ON on the Mac.
4. Pull to refresh. The phone re-discovers the Mac's current address — this fixes the "tunnel address rotated" case.
5. Still stuck? Toggle remote access off/on on the Mac (Settings → Phone access) to mint a fresh tunnel, then pull to refresh again.

Re-pairing is almost never the fix — your device token stays valid across restarts, address changes, and app updates. If the app ever says your token was rejected, that's the one case a re-pair actually helps.

Two things worth knowing

• The widget needs remote access — iOS blocks Home Screen widgets from local networks entirely, so the widget refreshes over the tunnel even when your phone is at home.
• Disconnect is remembered — if you disconnect a Mac, it stays disconnected across relaunches until you tap Connect. No surprise reconnects.

Watching your fleet is free. Remote reach from anywhere (the tunnel) is part of Termary Pro.