5 Apps That Work Between iPhone and Mac

Published on June 24, 2014

The integration between Apple products is something that keeps their customer pool coming back for more. The integration is about to get a lot tighter in OS X Yosemite (the coming Mac OS) and iOS8 (Apple's next iPhone/iPad operating system.) It's going to be really cool.  But you don't need to wait - there are a number of tools for platform integration now. 

There are 5 really clever apps recently mentioned by LifeHacker that that have your iPhone and your Mac working together like a charm.  Here's the scoop.

1. Notifyr: Send notifications from your iPhone up onto your Mac

Notifyr is the app for those who don't want to miss anything while they're working at their Mac, iPhone out of reach.  Just pair the two together with Notifyr (which uses Bluetooth Low Energy for minimal battery usage), and you'll get iPhone notifications right on the screen of your Mac.  You can mute certain apps so that they don't show up on your Mac.

2. Command-C: Share clipboard data between devices instantly

There are a bunch of ways to share text, images, or links between Mac and iPhone, but Command-C surpasses all the competition.  Install Command-C on both devices, and you can instantly share everything that you have on your clipboard (anything that you copy with "command+c").

3. Knock: Unlock your Mac with your iPhone

Instead of typing your password on your Mac to unlock, why not tap your phone?  When your iPhone is within a close proximity of your Mac, simply Knock on it twice and it will let you into your computer. Ok, so the necessity of this may not be super high, but it is definitely a neat way to use Bluetooth Low Energy.

4. Type2Phone: Share your Mac keyboard with your iPhone

Turn your Mac keyboard into a Bluetooth keyboard that you can pair with your phone by using Type2Phone.  It is super simple to connect to your phone with this app, and can certainly come in handy for those times you want to type more quickly on your phone (say, when you're playing a rousing game of Frotz, for example.)

5. Dialogue: Answer iPhone calls on your Mac

If you have an incoming call on your iPhone while you're working away, use Dialogue to answer it on your Mac much like you would answer a Skype call.  It makes multi-tasking just that much easier, without having to hold your phone up to your ear.  You can also do some recording with Dialogue, but sometimes it doesn't work too well with Mavericks.  For plain ol' voice calls though, we love this app.

Have some Mac to iPhone (or iPhone to Mac) apps that you love?  We'd love to hear from you!