Switchboard

Guides / Phone remote

Control your PC's audio from your phone

Tray menu → Phone remote… → Turn on, then scan the code with your phone's camera. A page opens in the phone's browser with your devices, your profiles and every app's volume. There's no app to install and no account.

It's for the moments you can't, or don't want to, reach the PC: a full-screen game where Discord is too loud, a PC on the TV across the room, a call where you need the mic off now. The page already knows your setup, so there are no buttons to build first. Plug in a headset and it shows up on the phone too.

The phone page: Mic and Sound buttons at the top, the OUTPUT list with EMBERTON III in use and a volume slider, a Default profile chip, then each app with its own volume slider.
The phone page. It updates every second while it's open.

What it can do

A switch, mute or profile made from the phone shows the usual notice on the PC, marked "from your phone", so whoever is at the PC knows why their sound moved.

Setting it up

  1. Right-click Switchboard's tray icon and choose Phone remote…
  2. Click Turn on. Windows asks whether Switchboard may use the network. Allow it on private networks.
  3. Point your phone's camera at the code and open the link. The phone must be on the same Wi-Fi as the PC.
  4. Optional: use your browser's Add to Home Screen so the remote opens like an app.
Switchboard's Phone remote window: a QR code, the address http://192.168.1.15:48231, and a status line saying Waiting for your phone.
The status line changes to "Connected" when your phone gets through.

The remote stays on until you turn it off, including after a restart, so a home-screen shortcut keeps working. If your PC gets a new address from the router, scan again.

If the page never loads

You scanned the code, the phone spins, and the window still says Waiting for your phone… Something between them is blocking the connection. In order of likelihood:

  1. Windows thinks your network is public. Windows 11 often marks a new Wi-Fi network public, and the firewall blocks incoming connections on public networks. If this is your home network, open Settings → Network & internet → Wi-Fi (or Ethernet), choose your network, and set Network profile type to Private.
  2. Switchboard was blocked when Windows asked. Open Windows Security → Firewall & network protection → Allow an app through firewall, click Change settings, find Switchboard, and tick Private.
  3. The phone isn't on the same network. Guest Wi-Fi, mobile data, or a VPN on the phone all put it somewhere else. Some routers also keep Wi-Fi devices from reaching each other ("AP isolation" or "client isolation").

Who else can use it

Only a phone that scanned this PC's code, and only from your own network. The code carries a random key, and the remote answers nothing without it. Requests from outside a home network are dropped before they're read, even if a router forwards the port by mistake.