Mellan
iPhone magic, without the iPhone.
You picked a Mac and an Android on purpose. Mellan connects them directly — shared clipboard, phone notifications, one-click hotspot.
No cloud, no account, no switching phones.
Messages · now · via Mellan
482913 is your verification code
Clipboard from your phone · now
1421 Guerrero St, San Francisco 94110
⌘V to paste on this Mac
The ecosystem tax
Owning an Android with a Mac shouldn’t feel like a downgrade. Apple built real continuity, then locked it to the iPhone. So you’ve quietly built workarounds. You know every one of these:
- The chat with yourselfevery link, address, and 2FA code takes a detour through WhatsApp or an empty email draft — to reach a screen two feet away
- The phone checkit buzzes on the desk, you pick it up “for a second,” twenty minutes later you’re back
- The hotspot danceunlock, settings, toggle, wait, re-find the network — every café, every train, every flaky hotel Wi-Fi
Thirty seconds here, a minute there, a dozen times a day. Call it 15 minutes, every day, forever. Until now the only way out was a phone you don’t want.
What it does — three workarounds, retired one by one
copy there, paste here
- Both directionscopy on the phone and press ⌘V on the Mac; copy on the Mac and paste on the phone
- Any plain textlinks, addresses, verification codes, half-written messages
- Passwords stay putanything copied from a password manager is detected and never sent
before
meet.google.com/xyz-vqpt-kkw09:14
1421 Guerrero St, San Francisco 9411011:02
48291311:40
six steps a trip
with mellan
Clipboard from your phone
1421 Guerrero St, San Francisco 94110
⌘V. that’s the whole trip.
see what needs you
- Native Notification CenterAndroid notifications arrive on the Mac with the app’s own name and icon
- Glance, don’t reachdecide whether it matters without picking the phone up — leave it face-down
- Codes you can read2FA codes land where you are already typing
before
14:32
Tuesday, 13 July
Messages
482913 is your verification code
Bank
Card payment: €23.40
DHL
Your parcel arrives today
every buzz is a pickup
with mellan
Messages · via Mellan
482913 is your verification code
DHL · via Mellan
Your parcel arrives today, 14:00–16:00
glance. decide. keep typing.
hotspot in one click
- One menu-bar clickturns the phone’s hotspot on and joins the Mac to it automatically
- Battery up topthe phone’s charge sits in the menu bar, so 4% never ambushes you
- Phone stays pocketedno unlocking, no settings, no re-finding the network
before
- 1 unlock the phone
- 2 settings
- 3 network & internet
- 4 hotspot & tethering
- 5 wi-fi hotspot
- 6 toggle on
- 7 wait for the network
- 8 join it from the mac
eight taps, two devices
with mellan
one click in the menu bar
Setup
Three steps, one coffee. Then it just runs.
- 1 Install both appsthe Mac app in your Applications folder, the companion app on the phone
- 2 Pair over Bluetooththe phone finds your Mac and both screens show the same six-digit number — check they match and confirm on each side
- 3 Wave through the permissionsBluetooth on both, plus notification access and a battery-optimisation exemption on Android so the link is not killed in the background
One Mac and one phone, paired to each other. Pairing again replaces the pair rather than adding to it.
No cloud. Just privacy.
Your clipboard is passwords, addresses, and half-written messages. Mellan never uploads any of it, because there’s nowhere to upload it to.
- Device to deviceyour Mac and phone connect directly over Bluetooth, encrypted end to end — if the data can’t go straight across, it doesn’t go at all
- Nothing to sign in tono account, no server, no telemetry — there’s no clipboard history sitting anywhere to leak, sell, or hand over
- Sensitive things stay putanything copied from a password manager is detected and skipped automatically
If Mellan shut down tomorrow, your installed apps would keep working. There’s no server to switch off.
Why this exists
Hey, I’m Felix 👋 I work on a Mac all day and carry an Android on purpose. Every year the iPhone-and-Mac tricks got shinier, and every year the advice was the same: just get an iPhone.
I didn’t want an iPhone. I wanted the computer I chose and the phone I chose to act like they were on the same team.
So I built Mellan. I run it every day. Everything above isn’t a roadmap; it’s working already.
Questions
What can it actually send?
Plain text, up to 32 KB — links, addresses, codes, half-written messages. Not images, formatted text or files: Bluetooth Low Energy does not have the bandwidth for them.
What does it cost in battery?
The phone holds one Bluetooth Low Energy connection, handed off to the radio hardware rather than kept alive by the app. That works out around 1–3% over 24 hours.
How many devices can I pair?
One Mac and one phone. Pairing again replaces the pair rather than adding to it.
Direct download or Google Play?
Both builds do the clipboard and the notifications. Two things need privileged access that Google Play does not permit — forwarding your phone’s clipboard without tapping Share, and switching the hotspot from the Mac — so those are in the direct download only, and they need Shizuku set up on the phone.
Does anything reach a server?
No. There is no account, no server and no telemetry — the two devices talk to each other directly, and the traffic between them is encrypted end to end.
Get it
Keep the phone you love. Lose the friction.