TweetMyMac Remote Controls Your Mac Via Twitter
Mac OS X only: Inspired by previously mentioned TweetMyPC, free application TweetMyMac remote controls your Mac from anywhere you can access Twitter, allowing you to restart and shutdown your computer, take a screenshot, open a torrent and more.
To get started using TweetMyMac, you’ll need to sign up for a new Twitter account dedicated specifically to controlling your Mac, then follow your main Twitter account from your new dedicated account. (Note: You should only follow that one account from your TweetMyMac Twitter account—unless you want to give random people the ability to remotely control your Mac. You’ll probably also want to protect your updates.)
Once you’ve set up your dedicated Twitter account, installed TweetMyMac, and set it up with your new Twitter account, you’re ready to execute some commands.
Command Purpose shutdown Shutdown your Mac. Will NOT save any open files. restart Restart your Mac. Will NOT save any open files. logout Logout of your Mac. Will NOT save any open files. sleep Sleep your Mac. ip Get your Mac’s external IP address. Your Mac will reply with it’s current IP. isight Snap an image from your Mac’s iSight camera. Your Mac will reply with the picture posted on TwitPic. screenshot Get a screenshot of your Mac. Your Mac will reply with the picture posted on TwitPic. say [phrase] Your Mac will speak the phrase in the default voice. torrent [torrent URL] Your Mac will download the torrent and open it in the default torrent client. [URL] Your Mac will open any URL it is sent. %[command] Your Mac will execute the custom shell command. Note: this is disabled by default for security and must be enabled in the options to use.
I’m particularly partial to the torrent command, considering it allows you to start a BitTorrent download from any mobile device capable of copying and pasting a URL. (Does this mean Apple will have to reject Twitter apps now, too?)
TweetMyMac is freeware, Mac OS X only. For a Windows alternative, check out previously mentioned TweetMyPC.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@Duke Olivius: Requesting the IP of your mac might help track them down.
Awesome work. And yes, much faster and better than clunky logmein.
Ummm... logmein.com?
CyrilKepel
Anybody else finding the isight command seems to kill the programme?
optkk
Helpful for someone using Twitter via text messages and can't get the other tools which have been featured here on Lifehacker before to do stuff with texts working.
Only problem would be I couldn't have a seperate account, as my phone is already on my main account.
tylerf
@OCEntertainment: Not to say anything good or bad about the app, but it doesn't give any direct execution privileges by default, it just executes preassigned commands.
Alex Price
@tommertron: Or directly?
Personally, I don't like the idea of giving any kind of execution privileges to a twitter account, but that's me. I'd think though, going through twitter is kind of an extra step, when you could have a program that can send instructions directly from one computer to another. Or from your phone to your computer.
From a developers' standpoint, though, I can see the appeal of writing a server for your Mac/PC, and then letting Twitter (and all the Twitter apps out there) give the user their myriad of clients. So, there's that.
Doesn't seem to be working for me.
@tommertron: Email is so 1985.
I don't mean to disparage the hard work that the developper put into this, but I really have to question the 'use twitter to do x' applications out there.
I guess there's a use-case because there are a lot of these types of tools out there, but couldn't you essentially do the same thing over e-mail?
I'm interested in the isight option. Would this possibly be a free way to capture those no-good laptop burglars? Though you could always use the say phrase option to freak them out before hand...
Duke Olivius
@tommertron: There is something to be said for Twitter's accessibility, though. Lots of employers block SSH following the concept that users need the least amount of privileges on the company network that's needed to get their job done, for example. You could use a free email service, but that has some of the same security drawbacks (relying on someone else's server to be secure). Another option might be to roll your own email solution and use that for control... but then you might have to do some funky things with Dynamic DNS and the like to make sure you can always get to it. I'll concede that there probably is a certain level of "Twitter is the new, fad thing to use" behind this, though.
dUc0N
No‚ I don't think Apple will ban Twitter apps. Nor will they ban their browser because you can access pr0n. The whining about App Store policies is getting old. Time to move on.
TheMacAdvocate