dustyPad turns the iPad gathering dust in your drawer into a macropad and widget board for your Mac. Pause, mute, launch, glance — over local Wi-Fi. No account. No cloud. No new hardware.
The Mac does the thinking. The iPad just needs Safari and the same Wi-Fi. If it can load a web page, it can be a pad.
Drop dustyPad into Applications. It lives in your menu bar and hosts the whole show — quietly, only while it’s open.
On the iPad, open Safari and type the address. No App Store, no iOS update nag, no “this device is no longer supported”.
Enter the 6-digit code from your Mac. It’s single-use and rotates every 5 minutes, so your flatmate can’t skip your song.
Play, pause, louder, quieter. Without alt-tabbing out of the thing you were finally focused on.
One big key. Red means live. Grey means they can’t hear you sigh.
Apps, URLs, that one Notion page you open forty times a day. One key each.
Clock, weather, now playing, a real volume slider. Ambient information, not another notification.
CPU, memory, battery. Find out which tab is cooking your lap, before your lap does.
Any keyboard shortcut, any Shortcuts-app macro. ⌘⇧4 becomes a single, satisfying thunk.
Leaving for coffee? One key sleeps the Mac’s screen. The iPad stays on watch.
No account, no cloud relay, no telemetry. Mac and iPad talk straight across your Wi-Fi.
Two ship free. Three come with Pro, plus a custom theme for when none of these are quite you.
No subscription. No “Pro Plus”. Pay once on Gumroad, paste the key, done.
Everything you need to turn the drawer iPad into a desk iPad.
| Themes | Dots, Paper cut |
| Actions | Play/pause, volume, mic mute, open app, open link |
| Widgets | Clock, weather, now playing, volume slider |
| Devices | Any iPad / tablet with a browser |
| Account | None. Ever. |
Less than the USB cable you’d buy for a “real” macropad.
| Everything | in Free, plus — |
| Themes | Cyberdeck, Cockpit, Bauhaus + build your own |
| Actions | Keyboard shortcuts, Shortcuts-app macros, display off |
| Widgets | System stats — CPU, memory, battery |
| License | Gumroad key, yours for good |
Anything that runs Safari on iOS 9 or later — our reference device is a 2013 iPad mini 2. Android tablets, a Kindle Fire, even a spare phone work too: if it has a browser and the same Wi-Fi, it’s a pad. On the Mac side you need macOS 12 Monterey or newer.
No. Mac and iPad talk over your local network at dustypad.local. Only the weather widget fetches a forecast, and activating Pro checks your key with Gumroad once. Everything else works with the router unplugged from the world.
Only devices that entered your rotating 6-digit pairing code can send actions, and the server only runs while the app is open. No account, no analytics, no cloud relay. We can’t see your pad because there’s nothing to see it through.
No. $5 once on Gumroad, you get a license key, paste it in the app, done. New Pro themes and widgets come along at no extra cost. Free keeps working forever either way.