Is Remote Desktop a burst of screenshots?
No. The Mac captures and hardware-encodes a video stream, and the iPhone decodes it. Taps, drags, pinches, and two-finger scrolls act on that picture.
Video · text · keyboard
Drive the desktop, or read the window as text
Remote Desktop is the picture. Window Text is the focused window’s characters, including terminal line breaks, without OCR. If you have not paired yet, start with pairing.
Input
Input to Mac opens the system keyboard, Dictation, or a third-party input method. Shellcove receives the finished text and does not ask for the microphone. Home shortcuts cover common terminal keys. The full keyboard and mouse buttons open inside Remote Desktop. Clipboard changes mirror to the paired phone.
On a direct LAN path, video prefers UDP. Tailcat and a manual relay use TCP. A weak link keeps clarity first and then lowers frame rate. That is a recovery behavior, not a promise of a smooth picture.
Questions
Does control continue after I leave the app?
No. Shellcove keeps the session only in the foreground. Coming back reconnects automatically.