Help & FAQ

How to set up Akimbolt, how the everyday things work, and where to find each setting. If your question is not here, get in touch.

Getting started

What you need

• A Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
• An Android phone running Android 8.0 or later.
• Both on the same Wi-Fi network. A phone hotspot your Mac has joined also works.

You need both apps

Akimbolt is two apps that talk to each other, and neither does anything on its own. Install the Mac app from the Mac App Store and the phone app from Google Play.

Pairing the two apps

You pair each phone once. After that the two find each other by themselves whenever they are on the same network.

1. Open Akimbolt on your Mac. It lives in the menu bar at the top right of the screen. Click the icon and choose Open Akimbolt.
2. Start pairing. If no phone is paired yet, the window offers Pair a Phone. Otherwise use Add Phone at the bottom of the sidebar. Either way a QR code appears.
3. Open Akimbolt on your phone and tap Scan the code. Point the camera at your Mac's screen.
4. Choose what to share. The phone lists everything it can send, each with its own switch. Turn on what you want. Android asks for the matching permission as you turn each one on.

Turning things on later

You do not have to decide everything while pairing. Every switch is on the phone's main screen and you can change it whenever you like. Turning one off stops that information reaching your Mac straight away.

Copy and paste

Copying from your Mac to your phone happens by itself. Going the other way takes one extra tap.

Android does not let an app read the clipboard in the background. Only the app you are looking at can see what you copied, so the phone cannot pass a copy across on its own. The share sheet does the same job in one tap. Anything you copy inside Akimbolt itself goes across automatically.

On your Mac, recent clipboard items are kept in a list. Open Akimbolt and look under Clipboard.

Sending a link to the other device

A web address is more useful opened than pasted, so Akimbolt opens it.

Web addresses only, starting with http or https. Anything else is treated as ordinary text and goes to the clipboard instead.

Sending to only one phone

What you copy on your Mac goes to every connected phone. To send it only to your main one, turn off Send clipboard to all phones in Settings, under General.

Files and photos

Getting things off your phone

Open Akimbolt on your Mac and choose Files under your phone's name. You are browsing the phone's storage directly, so nothing has been copied yet.

• Photos and videos show as thumbnails. Switch to the grid view in the toolbar to see them larger.
• Double-click a file to download it, or a folder to open it.
• Select several and use the download button in the toolbar.
• Click a column heading to sort by size, kind or date.
• The details pane, from the button at the top right, shows a larger preview, the exact size and the file type without downloading anything.

Downloads go to ~/Downloads/Akimbolt, in a folder named after the phone they came from.

Getting things onto your phone

Drag a file from your Mac onto the Files window. It lands in the folder you are looking at. You can also use the phone's own Share button and pick Akimbolt to send something the other way.

Backing up your photos

Akimbolt can copy new photos and videos off your phone by itself, so there is a second copy of them on your Mac. It only ever copies. Nothing is deleted, on either device, and deleting a photo on your phone does not remove the copy on your Mac.

Turning it on

1. On your phone, switch on Photo backup and allow access to your photos.
2. On your Mac, choose Photos under your phone's name, then Choose Albums.
3. Pick your albums and whether videos come across as well, then close the settings.
4. Press Start Backup.

Where the photos go

Either into a folder, or into the Photos app. Choose which under Backup Settings in the toolbar.

• A folder. By default ~/Pictures/Akimbolt/[your phone], sorted into year and month. You can choose any folder, including one on an external drive, and change the sorting to a single folder, by year, or by year, month and day.
• The Photos app. Photos are added to your library and filed under the date they were taken. Akimbolt can add to your library but cannot see what is already in it.

How much comes across

Everything on the phone in the albums you picked, however far back it goes. To skip an old backlog, turn on Only photos taken after a date and choose one. You can move that date earlier later on and the older photos will then come across.

Videos are off by default. They take much longer to copy than photos.

When it runs

Whenever your phone connects, every fifteen minutes while it stays connected, and when your Mac wakes up. There is also a Check Now button. A first run of several thousand photos takes a while and continues in the background. You can pause it and it will carry on from where it stopped.

Checking it worked

The Photos section shows the last hundred that came across, and a count of everything backed up so far.

If anything could not be copied, an orange not backed up button appears at the top. It lists what did not make it and why, with a button to try again. The usual reason is a file format the Photos app will not accept.

If you delete the backup

Akimbolt keeps a record of what it has already copied, so it will not copy those photos again. If you have deleted the folder, or moved it somewhere Akimbolt cannot see, use Copy Everything Again in Backup Settings. Photos still on your Mac are left where they are.

Messages and calls

Texts

Full conversations, with pictures, in a Mac window. If your phone has two SIMs, there is a control to pick which one sends.

Starting a new one

Use the new message button above the conversation list. Type a number or start typing a name to pick a contact. The same works for calls.

Calls

When your phone rings, the buttons appear on your Mac: answer, decline, mute and hang up. The audio stays on your phone, so pick it up or use your headset once you have answered.

You can start a call from your Mac as well, from your call history or your contacts. The phone does the dialling.

Verification codes

When a text arrives with a login code in it, Akimbolt puts the code on your Mac ready to copy in one click. It stays for five minutes.

To turn this off, go to Settings and then Notifications.

Notifications and quiet hours

Everything about being interrupted is in one place: Settings, under Notifications.

Silence everything for a while

Use Mute for thirty minutes, an hour, the rest of the day, or until you turn it back on. The menu bar icon is the quickest route. Notifications still arrive and are still listed in the app, so you can catch up on them.

Quiet hours

Set a time range and the days it applies to, and notifications are held back automatically.

• A range can run past midnight. 10:00 pm to 7:00 am is one stretch, not two.
• The days you pick are the days it starts. Choosing weekdays keeps Friday night quiet into Saturday morning.

Turning notifications back on during a quiet period lasts until that period ends. The schedule stays on for the following night.

What is silenced already

Some notifications do not appear on your Mac when you first connect a phone. All of them are listed in Settings › Notifications and any of them can be turned back on.

• Your messaging app and your dialler. Texts already appear in Messages and calls in Calls. If you turn Messages or Call history off, their notifications come back.
• Android system notifications. USB connected, screenshot taken, an update is available.
• Anything your phone was told to keep quiet. If you have set an app to notify you silently on the phone, it appears in the list on your Mac without a banner or a sound.

Silence one particular app

Find one of its notifications in the Notifications list on your Mac and silence it from there. Everything you have silenced is listed in Settings › Notifications, where you can turn it back on.

This applies per phone. Silencing an app on your work phone leaves it alone on your personal one.

Hiding one kind of notification from an app

For an app you want to hear from about some things and not others. WhatsApp telling you it has backed up your messages, for example, when you still want the messages.

1. Right-click one of the notifications you do not want.
2. Choose Hide Notifications Like This.
3. Type a word from it, such as backup, and choose Hide These.

That app's notifications containing the word stop appearing on your Mac. Its other notifications carry on as before, and no other app is affected. Nothing changes on the phone itself.

The word is matched anywhere in the notification, in the heading or the message, and capital letters make no difference. Words you have hidden are listed under the app in Settings › Notifications › Manage Apps, where you can click one to remove it.

Replying from a banner

When a notification has a reply box on your phone, the Mac banner has one too. Type and press Send, and the reply goes out from the phone. The notification clears on both devices.

Other buttons appear on the Mac only when the phone can carry them out. Buttons that open a screen on the phone, such as Call back on a missed call, are not shown. Call back from Calls instead, and use Messages to write to someone.

Do Not Disturb

With Share Do Not Disturb turned on, a Focus on your Mac silences your phone, and a phone already on Do Not Disturb stops its notifications appearing on your Mac.

Where the settings are

The Mac's settings have three tabs:

• General for clipboard sharing and what this Mac is called.
• Notifications for muting, quiet hours, sound, Do Not Disturb sharing, verification codes, and every app you have silenced.
• Devices for your paired phones, which one is primary, and unpairing.

Photo backup is set up per phone rather than in Settings. Choose Photos under the phone's name, then Backup Settings in the toolbar.

The phone's settings cover pairing another Mac, choosing which Wi-Fi networks to look for a Mac on, reconnecting on demand, and going back through setup. What each feature shares, and the permission it needs, is listed next to its switch on the main screen.

Using more than one phone

Up to eight phones at once. Each keeps its own messages, notifications and files, so replying on your work phone does not touch your personal one.

One phone is the primary. It sits at the top of the list and is the one that gets your clipboard if you have chosen not to send it to all of them. Change which is which under Settings › Devices.

Privacy and security

There are no servers. Your messages go from your phone to your Mac across your own network and nowhere else. There is no account, no sign-up, no analytics and no tracking.

Pairing performs an X25519 key exchange authenticated by the QR code, and everything after that is encrypted with AES-256-GCM. Each paired phone has its own keys, so one phone cannot read another's traffic, and new session keys are created every time they reconnect.

If you lose your phone, unpair it under Settings › Devices and it loses access straight away. There is no account for anyone to get into.

Read the full privacy policy.

When something is not working

Your Mac says it is starting the network

macOS asks each app for permission before it can reach other devices on your network, and Akimbolt cannot work without it.

Akimbolt checks this itself. If the permission is missing it shows "Your phone can't see this Mac" at the bottom of the window, with a Fix link that takes you to the right place. To go there yourself: System Settings › Privacy & Security › Local Network, then switch Akimbolt on.

They cannot find each other

• Check both are on the same Wi-Fi network. Guest networks and some workplace networks stop devices seeing each other.
• On your phone, open Akimbolt and tap Reconnect now in Settings.
• Check the network you are on is one the phone is allowed to look on, under Wi-Fi networks in the phone's settings.

Notifications are not appearing on my Mac

• Check macOS is allowing them, under System Settings › Notifications › Akimbolt. The Notifications tab in Akimbolt's settings will tell you if this is the problem and take you there.
• Check they are not muted and that quiet hours is not running. The menu bar icon says so if either applies.
• Check the app is not silenced, under Settings › Notifications.
• Check Notification mirroring is switched on on the phone. Android needs a separate permission for this and will ask when you turn it on.

Will it drain my phone's battery?

It only looks for your Mac on networks where it has found one before, so it is not searching everywhere you go. Once connected it holds the link open rather than checking repeatedly. If it has not found your Mac after ten idle minutes with the screen off, it drops back to looking every five minutes, and tries again as soon as you wake the phone.

Does it work with the phone's screen off?

Yes. Texts, calls and notifications keep arriving with the phone face down in your bag.