Phones and tablets

Open the connect page in the phone's browser, or use the RFDesk app for Android. In the browser viewer, the toolbar switches between two ways of using your finger:

• Touch: the screen is the remote screen. Tap where you want to click.
• Touchpad: the screen is a touchpad. Move the pointer, then tap.
• In both, a long press is a right click, two fingers scroll, and a pinch zooms your view.
• Show the keyboard opens the on-screen keyboard, Show the special keys adds keys such as Ctrl, Alt and the arrows, and Gestures lists every gesture.

An Android phone or tablet can itself be the device that is helped, with the RFDesk app for Android.

1. In the app, open Share this device and switch it on. It is off until you do.
2. The app shows your ID and a password. Give both to the person helping you. The password changes after every session.
3. When they connect, you are asked. Choose Allow viewing only or Allow viewing and control, or decline. With no answer the request is declined.
4. Android asks once more before the screen is shared.
5. Press Stop in the app or in its notification to end the session at any time.

While sharing is switched on, RFDesk keeps running in the background with a notification. Switch it off when you no longer need help.

• Seeing the screen, always with your approval for each connection.
• Control (taps, swipes and typing), once you have set it up. See below.
• Chat, with Allow chat.
• Receiving files, with Allow receiving files. You are asked once per session. The files are saved in RFDesk's own folder; nothing on the phone is shown to the other person or taken from it.
• Clipboard text, with Allow clipboard text: text the other person copies arrives on the phone's clipboard.
• The same security code on both sides.

To let a person you allowed tap, swipe and type, Android needs you to switch on "RFDesk remote control" under Accessibility in its settings. Set up control in the app opens those settings. Android shows a strong warning, because such a service can act on the whole device.

• RFDesk uses it only during a session you approved with control on, and only to perform that person's touches and typing.
• It never acts on RFDesk's own screens, so nobody can answer a connection request or remove the Stop button from afar.
• You still choose, for each connection, between viewing only and control.
• Viewing works without it, and you can switch it off again at any time.

• Android does not let an app in the background read the clipboard. Text you copy on the phone reaches the other person only when you open RFDesk during the session.
• Control is not possible until the accessibility service is switched on. Until then others can only view.
• There is no connecting without approval: you are asked before every connection.
• The file manager is not offered. The other person cannot browse the phone's files.
• Sound, voice calls, the whiteboard, remote printing, restart and privacy mode are not offered.