Phone and remote access

The browser view works on a phone: the map, a unit’s comms, alerts, and Zen fit a narrow screen, and a phone answers what agents wait on as the desktop does. A phone reaches the page in one of two ways.

Over your tailnet

/boss gui remote serves the page on your tailnet with tailscale serve, never Funnel. Pair a phone by scanning the QR code it prints. Remote access stays on across a restart until /boss gui remote off.

Install it as an app. The page installs as an app (Add to Home Screen, or Chrome’s Install) with the entry https://<this machine>.<tailnet>.ts.net:8443/sb-app/. Opened without a pairing (after a new token, or on iOS, where the app keeps cookies of its own), the app asks for the pairing code that /boss gui remote prints under the QR code. The code is 8 characters, works once within ten minutes, and is void after five wrong tries.

On the same Wi-Fi

/boss gui lan reaches the page from a phone on the same Wi-Fi, without Tailscale. It is off until you turn it on.

This computer makes its own certificate, after showing you the risk.

Caution

Anyone who copies the certificate’s key from this computer could pose to your phones as private-network sites (your router’s page, a NAS) until you remove the certificate from each phone. Use it on your phone’s hotspot, or on a Wi-Fi that connects the phone directly to this computer.

1. Each phone installs the certificate once.
2. It pairs by QR code or typed code.
3. You allow each new phone on this computer by typing the number it shows.

/boss gui lan off turns it off; paired phones stay paired. /boss gui lan reset makes a new certificate and asks what to do with the pairings; either way each phone removes the old certificate and installs the new one:

Choice	When
Keep the pairings	The old certificate is ending, or the computer was renamed
Unpair every Wi-Fi device	The key or a phone may have been stolen

Pairing and the token

The page’s address carries a random token. The token is kept across a restart, an upgrade, a crash, and a reboot, so a page left open reconnects by itself and a phone stays paired (for 90 days from its last use). A new token comes only from /boss gui rotate, a missing or corrupt gui-secrets.json, or a port that was taken at the next start; every phone then pairs again.

Keeping the token has a cost: another account on this computer that binds the port during a crash or restart gap sees what an open page sends. Rotate after a gap you do not trust.

• /boss gui devices lists the paired phones; /boss gui unpair <id|all> unpairs them.
• The settings page’s Phone & devices section does the same.

What a phone may not do

A paired phone answers questions, writes to sessions, and opens, quits, stashes, and pops units. Some choices belong to this computer’s own page only: allowing a new phone, deciding a Straw Link join request, /boss gui rotate, and every secret. See Remote access for the rules.