Tether

BlueFerry is experimental Linux software that connects a paired iPhone to a Linux desktop over Bluetooth, without a Mac relay, Apple login, cloud service, or subscription. It provides native GTK, KDE/Kirigami, Quickshell, and terminal clients for reading and sending SMS, RCS, and iMessage, starting conversations, syncing contacts, marking messages read, and optionally mirroring other iPhone notifications. Local message history can be encrypted with GNOME Keyring or KDE Wallet. It only receives messages observed while connected and does not download an iCloud Messages archive. Attachments, reactions, typing indicators, FaceTime, calls, and complete sent-message history are unsupported; group replies are disabled or require confirmation when Bluetooth does not provide enough participant information. The project distributes native packages for several Linux distributions and warns that changes to iPhone Bluetooth behavior could affect compatibility.

Tailscale is a networking service for creating private WireGuard-based networks between a user's devices and servers. It can provide remote access over SSH and route traffic through an authorized device configured as an exit node, such as a local Mac, so external websites see that device's network address rather than the server's data-center address. The project includes the open-source `tailscaled` daemon and `tailscale` command-line tool, with the daemon running on Linux, Windows, macOS, and to varying degrees on FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The repository also supplies code used by Tailscale's mobile applications; platform-specific GUI wrappers and hosted-service components are separate. Packages are provided for several distributions, and the project uses WireGuard with authentication features including 2FA, OAuth, and SSO.

Blip is a Linux iMessage client for the Omarchy bar and desktop, developed by Fred Nix and contributors. It uses an existing Mac signed into Messages as a gateway: Linux tools communicate with Mac-side bridge tools over SSH, which read the Mac's chat database and use Messages.app automation to send messages. The Linux client renders conversations, group chats, unread indicators, notifications, search, link previews, photos and files, while a Mac-side watcher provides near-real-time updates. Blip requires an awake, reachable Mac running macOS 13 or newer, with Messages in iCloud, SSH key authentication, and the required macOS permissions. It does not use a hosted server, telemetry, or a Linux-side message cache; message text and attachment data travel through the SSH connection, although opened attachments and link previews may be cached locally. It is distributed as an Omarchy/Quickshell plugin with TypeScript, QML, and Mac bridge tools under the MIT license.

SSH Clipboard is a native clipboard synchronization tool for macOS and Linux. It transfers text, images, files, and rich clipboard representations over persistent peer-to-peer encrypted SSH connections, without a cloud relay, account, or separate encryption key; macOS uses the pasteboard and Linux supports Wayland and X11. Its first-run terminal interface discovers compatible Tailscale peers when available or accepts passwordless SSH connections, verifies them, installs or upgrades the tool when needed, and starts a per-user background service. The tool includes commands for setup, status, monitoring, and updates, with deduplication and newest-value queues for synchronization. It is distributed through npm, implemented in Rust with Ratatui, and supports macOS and Linux on arm64 and x64; headless Linux can use an opt-in managed Xvfb service.

Cloudflare Tunnel (formerly Argo Tunnel) is a secure tunneling service from Cloudflare that exposes local HTTP and TCP services to the Cloudflare edge by creating an outbound connection from a host to Cloudflare's network. It is implemented by the open-source cloudflared client/daemon, supports named tunnels and ingress rules, and integrates with Cloudflare Zero Trust / Access for authenticated routing and access control. The service is distributed by Cloudflare and the cloudflared client is published on Cloudflare's GitHub.