How To Use Veency to Remote Control your iPhone

Jay Freeman, the creator of Cydia and Cycorder, has once again surprised me with another high quality application – Veency. Actually, Veency have been released for quite a while but does not own much coverage on the iPhone community, compared with other hot iPhone applications. I thought it’s really deserved a in-depth coverage on that. It’s really a great application that adds one more reason for you to consider jailbreak iPhone if you haven’t done so.

Earlier, I have covered how you can use VNC Client on iPhone to remote control your computer. Veency works the other way round. You can think of Veency as a VNC server and you can use VNC client to remote control your iPhone with a VNC client (such as Chicken VNC on Mac). Take a look at the above screenshot, you can see I’m actually connecting to my iPhone from my iMac.

You can use mouse to click on any iPhone application and launch it remotely. And, the most awesome feature of Veency is it allows you to use keyboard to type character directly. Pretty cool, right? You can type SMS, email and note without using the default virtual keyboard. So far, I do not find any problem launching iPhone application remotely. The response is quite fast. However, there is a significant lag for streaming video application (e.g. Cycorder).

Veency has mimicked nearly every type of finger gestures and even home button/power button using mouse click:

• Use left mouse click to mimic tap to access application
• Use right mouse button to access home screen
• Use middle mouse button to lock your iPhone
• Drag mouse point from left to right or right to left to flick through photos or contact list

I have captured a short video on how you can use Veency and remote control iPhone from my iMac. The video will demonstrate:

• Connect to iPhone remotely and use mouse to “Slide to unlock”
• Launch Calculator remotely and type note using keyboard
• Use mouse to rearrange Safari icon
• Use middle mouse button to put iPhone into sleep mode

How to use Veency on iPhone

Note: Veency is only available for jailbreak iPhone. To take advantage of it, you have to jailbreak your iPhone first. For guide, you may refer to the complete jailbreak guide (Mac / Windows).

1. First, fire up Cydia and install Veency.

2. After installation, you would not find any Veency application icon on home screen. But Veency should be already there.

3. Connecting to Veency requires you to use a VNC client. For Windows user, you can download VNC client from RealVNC. For Mac users, I recommend you use Chicken VNC, which is also free.

4. Here, I’ll use Chicken VNC as example. For other VNC clients, the connection procedures should be more or less the same. Okay, launch Chicken VNC.

5. Next, check your iPhone’s IP address. You can find it in “Settings” -> Wifi . Click “>” on your selected Wifi Network to display the IP address (e.g. 10.0.1.197)

6. Back to Chicken VNC, click “Connection” -> “New Connection” from menu bar. Type in the IP address and leave all other as default. Click “Connect” button to connect to your iPhone.

7. Go back to your iPhone. You’ll see a request from the VNC client and you have to accept it.

8. Once accepted the remote connection, you’ll see the iPhone on your computer.

What do you use Veency for?

So, why do you need to remote control iPhone? At first, I also asked the same question and I believe most of the readers got the same question. A couple of applications I can think of after a month’s usage of Veency:

• Use your own keyboard to type text message. Due to my work-related issue, I always need to provide support via SMS from home. The virtual keyboard on iPhone is not very good enough. Now I used to connect to my iPhone remotely and type text message. That’s really great and speed up all my support task.
• I used to charge my iPhone at my bedroom. Now, I can check anything on iPhone while I’m using my laptop at living room while my iPhone is still being charged.
• Another application is to provide tech support for iPhone remotely. I love iPhone and used to help some of my buddies to resolve iPhone issues. Now with Veency, I can remotely access the problematic iPhone (of course, Wifi is still available) and get to know the problem details. (But this may not work for all cases due to firewall restriction for VNC connection)

Limitations

Presently, Veency does not come with any configuration screen for you to enable/disable Veency service. And, you cannot set any VNC password (by default, no password is required) on Veency. As mentioned by Jay Freeman, you can expect these two features will be available in future release. So, for now, if you want to disable Veency, you only have two choices – either you disable the Wifi or you completely uninstall it.

I think Veency is great. How about you? Share with me and other readers on your thought on Veency and how you use it by leaving comment below.