Use Gemini CLI from your iPhone

Gemini CLI does the work on your Mac. You do not have to sit next to it: start it, leave, and answer it from the phone when it needs you.

This guide is about the Gemini CLI installed on your own Mac, with your own Google account or API key. ShiftStage does not call any model and sends nothing to us: it drives the CLI you already have.

What you can do from the phone

Start a session in any folder the Mac shares — the agent finds gemini on your PATH without configuration.
Answer its questions from a notification: the command and its risk are named, the options become buttons.
Review what it changed as a real diff, stage line by line, commit, push.
Drop into the terminal — a real PTY with your shell — for anything the agent should not do on its own.

Several sessions run at once and keep running when the app is in the background. If you also use Claude Code or Codex, they live in the same list: see the Claude Code and Codex guides.

Set it up once

Install the agent on the Mac. A signed, notarised app from our open Homebrew tap. It shares only the folders you name.
```
brew install --cask shiftstage/shiftstage/shiftstage-agent
```
Install the app on the iPhone from the App Store.
Pair them. Scan the code on the Mac's screen and confirm the same words on both devices. No account. The first pairing needs both on the same network.

That is the whole setup: no VPN, no port forwarding, no SSH keys. On the same Wi-Fi the phone talks to the Mac directly; away from home the connection goes peer to peer, or through a relay that forwards only end-to-end encrypted bytes.

Keep the Mac awake

An agent on a sleeping Mac does nothing, and nothing can reach it — ShiftStage tells you the Mac is asleep instead of timing out. For a Mac that works while you are away, turn off system sleep and let it restart after a power cut:

sudo pmset -a sleep 0 disksleep 0

and enable "Start up automatically after a power failure" in System Settings. The display can still sleep.

Get it

The Mac agent: download page — one Homebrew command or a notarised disk image. The iPhone app: App Store. Free forever for one Mac on your own network, no account; $7.99 a month or $69.99 a year to reach it from anywhere.

More guides: all guides.