Softwareandroiddesk panelstream deckopen sourcedotnet
PhoneBox, a free MIT-licensed tool, turns an old Android phone into a desk panel and shortcut deck for Windows, Linux and macOS over USB or paired Wi-Fi
The agent only listens on 127.0.0.1 and the phone can send nothing but shortcut IDs, so a retired handset gets widgets and Stream Deck-style keys without root on the phone or admin rights on the PC.
Your old phone is sitting in a drawer, slowly becoming a very expensive paperweight. PhoneBox offers it a second career as a desk panel. The README describes the job in one line: “Turn an old Android phone into a local desk panel for Windows, Linux and macOS.”
The setup has two halves. A PC agent gathers the data, and the phone app displays it full-screen. You lay out pages in a visual editor on the PC, which opens at http://127.0.0.1:8765. Widgets cover system stats, media controls, weather, calendars, Home Assistant entities, Docker containers, news feeds, and values pushed in from webhooks. The README groups them as Time, Weather & sky, Computer, AI & code, Personal, and Web & data.
Then come the keys. These launch apps, URLs, or built-in actions on the PC, so the phone doubles as a macro pad. Rules can flip the panel to another page when something happens, such as a call starting.
Requirements are short but real. The README says “You need an Android 9+ phone with USB debugging turned on.” The PC needs the .NET 10 SDK and adb for a source install, and the release agent archives need the matching .NET 10 runtime. The FAQ says there is no root on the phone and no admin rights on the PC.
On Windows, you clone the repo and run .\scripts\install.ps1 -Apk -Autostart, or use Scoop with scoop install phonebox/phonebox. A winget package is prepared but not yet accepted. Linux and macOS run ./scripts/install.sh --apk --autostart, which sets up a systemd user service on Linux or a launchd agent on macOS, after you install adb and playerctl or the macOS equivalents.
USB is the primary link: the app talks to the agent through an adb reverse tunnel. Wi-Fi comes after a one-time USB pairing, and when you unplug, the phone switches to https://<pc>:8766 with a pinned certificate and key. The agent also offers its Tailscale address, so the phone can reach the PC from another network.
The security story is better than most side projects bother with. The agent listens on 127.0.0.1 only, and the phone can only send shortcut IDs, never commands. A compromised phone can press the buttons you built and nothing more, which is the design you want on a thing that lives next to your keyboard.
Now the arithmetic. The page header says “114 widgets” and “30 templates.” The About blurb says “55 widgets.” The Control Deck section mentions 58 Control Deck widgets. The README never reconciles these, so I’d treat every feature count as a vibe (three numbers, one project, zero explanation). When I read it the repo showed 326 stars, 30 forks, 4 open issues and 8 open pull requests, so people are using it and poking at it.
The README never says which phones the author has tested it on, only that Android 9 is the floor, so your drawer’s oldest candidate may be a gamble.
Pick the phone with the good screen.