How it works — and how to set it up in a few minutes.
You speak on your iPhone. A small free helper — the ShellSpeak Gateway — runs on your own Mac and hands your words to Claude Code there. The answer is read back to you. Your phone talks only to your Mac; nothing goes to any cloud, and it uses your Claude.
The green dots are your voice going out; the amber dots are the spoken answer coming back — encrypted the whole way.
Get ShellSpeak Gateway (macOS) →Universal (Apple Silicon & Intel) · signed & notarized by Apple · free.
Open the downloaded .dmg and drag ShellSpeak Gateway to Applications.
First launch: right‑click the app → Open (once).
The gateway needs it. Get Claude Code,
sign in, and confirm claude --version works in Terminal.
Open ShellSpeak Gateway. A green dot means Claude Code was found. Click Start Gateway — a QR code appears. Leave the app running.
On your iPhone: ShellSpeak → Connect → Scan QR Code, point it at the code on your Mac. Allow Local Network if asked. That’s it — tap SPEAK and talk.
On the same Wi‑Fi, the steps above are all you need. To reach your Mac from any network — cellular, a café, on the road — add Tailscale, a free separate app that makes a private, encrypted link between your own devices. Your phone still talks only to your Mac, never the public internet.
In ShellSpeak Gateway click Start, then flip the toggle from This Wi‑Fi to Anywhere. It checks both devices are on Tailscale, then shows a new QR. Scan it once in the app — now it works from any network.
Tailscale is a separate third‑party app and a trademark of Tailscale Inc. ShellSpeak works with it but is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tailscale.
Yes. The connection is encrypted and the gateway pins your Mac’s own certificate, so only your phone
(with the key from that QR) can connect. Every spoken command is screened against a safety denylist —
things like rm -rf, disk formatting, or “delete everything” are blocked before they reach
Claude Code, and deletions go to the Trash, not gone for good.