OpenClaw on iPhone and iPad

The official iPhone app is on the App Store, and like its Android counterpart it is a node: it connects to a Gateway over a WebSocket on the LAN or a tailnet, exposes the phone’s capabilities to the agent, and carries the chat. What sets it apart in the docs is how much it does while disconnected. Here is how the app reaches a Gateway, what pairing asks for, the offline behaviour, the settings that moved into the Dashboard, and the Apple Watch.

Reaching the Gateway

• The Gateway runs on another device, macOS, Linux or Windows through WSL2, and the phone finds it over the same LAN through Bonjour, over a tailnet through unicast DNS-SD, or through a manual host and port.
• The recommended remote path is Tailscale Serve, started with the Gateway’s tailscale flag; for a trusted LAN, an authenticated LAN bind instead. If the Gateway has not been configured yet, onboarding has to run first so the setup code has a token or password path.
• First launch is a short pairing explainer and then Gateway setup; there is no aggregate permissions page, optional access is requested when a feature needs it, through the native iOS prompt.

The default loopback bind is not reachable from a phone.

Chat, connected or not

The app keeps a small read-only offline cache of recent sessions per paired Gateway, so a cold open paints the last transcript immediately and refreshes when the Gateway answers. Messages sent while disconnected go into a durable per-Gateway outbox of up to fifty: they show in the transcript, flush in order on reconnect with idempotent retries, and expire rather than send after forty-eight hours offline. Chat accepts images from the picker, camera, Files, paste and the share sheet, renders Mermaid diagrams inline and offline, and can speak a reply through the Gateway’s speech provider or on-device speech.

Settings and the Dashboard

• Settings opens the Dashboard’s settings pages when connected with operator admin; if the Gateway’s pages do not support the companion app, a banner asks you to update the Gateway, and the native connection screen stays available.
• This iPhone or This iPad holds appearance, notification delivery, camera access, keep-awake and the optional Health summaries, with a Permissions page for the rest; the Talk page on the Dashboard owns voice wake, Talk and background listening.
• The sidebar opens Activity, Workboard, Skill Workshop, Instances, Dreaming, Usage and Automations in the embedded Dashboard, and channels and skills are managed there too; agent selection and read-only Files browsing stay native.

OpenClaw on Android is the Android side, and OpenClaw and Tailscale explains the Serve path the docs recommend.

Apple Watch

The page also covers voice on the watch: dictated replies and spoken answers through the paired iPhone, a standalone watch voice setup, and an opt-in direct watch node. OpenClaw nodes and remote hands is the general picture of what a paired device lends the agent.

On Diali

On Diali the Gateway question is settled before the phone arrives: the instance runs it, the phone pairs, and the dashboard approves. Hosted OpenClaw on Diali is the assistant.

• Bonjour on the LAN, DNS-SD on a tailnet, or a manual address.
• A read-only cache and a fifty-message outbox for the disconnected moments.
• Settings live in the Dashboard; the connection screen stays native.