--- title: Tether Brings the Apple Continuity Experience to Linux description: Zack Bartel built Tether, an open source MIT-licensed project that brings Apple Continuity-style features to Linux without needing a Mac. It handles clipboard... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/tether-brings-the-apple-continuity-experience-to-linux-2af00aqvi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Tether Brings the Apple Continuity Experience to Linux | daily.dev og:description: Zack Bartel built Tether, an open source MIT-licensed project that brings Apple Continuity-style features to Linux without needing a Mac. It handles clipboard... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/tether-brings-the-apple-continuity-experience-to-linux-2af00aqvi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/2Af00AQVi.png og:image:alt: Tether Brings the Apple Continuity Experience to Linux og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Tether Brings the Apple Continuity Experience to Linux **[It's Foss](https://daily.dev/sources/itsfoss)** · 3 min read · 74 upvotes · 7 comments ## Summary Zack Bartel built Tether, an open source MIT-licensed project that brings Apple Continuity-style features to Linux without needing a Mac. It handles clipboard sync, file transfer, OTP autofill, iMessage, SMS, notifications, and contact sync between an iPhone and a Linux machine, using a background daemon (tetherd), a GTK4 app, and a SwiftUI iOS companion app that discovers the daemon via Bonjour. Bluetooth groundwork came from ancs4linux and BlueFerry, but Zack did a clean-room C++ rewrite to keep the license MIT. Pairing security is handled with mTLS, and the codebase gets regular AI-assisted security sweeps. Tether is installable via AUR on Arch Linux or .deb/.rpm packages on GitHub, requires iOS 26.1+ on the iPhone side, and needs Firefox and Thunderbird extensions for OTP autofill to work fully. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Is there a tool that brings Apple Continuity-like features such as clipboard sync and iMessage to Linux? Yes, an open source project called Tether replicates parts of Apple's Continuity experience on Linux without requiring a Mac. It supports clipboard sync, file transfer, OTP autofill, iMessage, SMS, notifications, and contact sync between an iPhone and a Linux machine, using a background daemon called tetherd paired with a SwiftUI iOS companion app discovered via Bonjour. _Developers weighing Linux desktop tooling for Apple device integration can track projects like Tether on daily.dev._ ### How does Tether get iMessage and SMS working on Linux since there's no official API for that? Since Linux has no supported way into iMessage or SMS, and proxying through an actual Mac was ruled out, the creator used Bluetooth groundwork from ancs4linux and BlueFerry as a starting point. Because both are GPL-licensed, he performed a clean-room C++ rewrite so Tether could remain MIT licensed, and secured pairing between the iPhone and Linux daemon using mTLS. _Anyone building cross-platform messaging bridges can follow projects like this on daily.dev for implementation approaches._ ### What are the requirements to install and use Tether on Linux with an iPhone? Arch Linux users can install Tether via the AUR with 'yay -S tether', while other distros can get .deb and .rpm packages from the project's GitHub releases. On the iPhone side, the Tether - Linux Companion app requires iOS 26.1 or later, and OTP autofill needs both a Firefox extension and a Thunderbird extension installed. _Readers setting up cross-device workflows can keep tabs on tools like Tether through daily.dev._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@yekhutiel** · 8 upvotes > This guy seems to have built a KDE connect variant, that's pretty cool! > Can't wait to test it! **@cevheri** · 2 upvotes > iKDEConnect :) **@goodwine** · 1 upvotes > Una salvezza 💪 **@hardik15** · 0 upvotes > If it works like advertised, mentioned in the post, it's great. **@talhasiddique7** · 0 upvotes > anyone try this? --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#mac](https://daily.dev/tags/mac) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/tether-brings-the-apple-continuity-experience-to-linux-2af00aqvi) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Tether Brings the Apple Continuity Experience to Linux","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/tether-brings-the-apple-continuity-experience-to-linux-2af00aqvi","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/tether-brings-the-apple-continuity-experience-to-linux-2af00aqvi"},"datePublished":"2026-08-31T13:02:33.095Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:08:27.000Z","description":"Zack Bartel built Tether, an open source MIT-licensed project that brings Apple Continuity-style features to Linux without needing a Mac. 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