ESP32-iPhone-agent: Let an AI model use an iPhone via ESP32, AirPlay, USB HID

Developer onehumanbeing released the ESP32-iPhone-agent, an open-source project that lets an AI model control a real iPhone using a $7 ESP32-S3 board as an AirPlay receiver and USB HID mouse and keyboard, with no computer and no jailbreak required. The board opens its own Wi-Fi hotspot and appears in the iPhone's Screen Mirroring list as "ESP32 Agent," forwards the H.264 stream over BLE to an app running on the same phone, which sends screenshots to any OpenAI-compatible vision model and executes tap, swipe, draw, type and key actions via USB HID. The project requires an ESP32-S3 board with PSRAM (tested on a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3, 8 MB PSRAM), an iPhone on iOS 18 or later with cellular data, and a Mac with Xcode only for initial flashing; the earlier computer-based version is preserved as tag v0.1.0 and branch legacy.

Let an AI model use a real iPhone with a $7 ESP32. Just the phone and the board: no computer, no jailbreak. English · 简体中文 https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/blob/main/README.zh-CN.md Demo video and updates: X @iamhenryyuan https://x.com/iamhenryyuan · YouTube demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly4im-P4jYg New: the computer is gone. The board is now the AirPlay receiver and the mouse, and the agent runs in an iPhone app on the same phone. The original version a Mac/Linux computer running UxPlay and a Python server is kept as tag v0.1.0 https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/tree/v0.1.0 and branch legacy https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/tree/legacy . See docs/legacy.md https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/blob/main/docs/legacy.md . "Set an alarm for 8:00 AM that repeats every Monday and Tuesday, then save it" : the agent leaves its own app, opens Clock, types the time into the wheel, ticks the days and saves. Photo from v0.1.0; the task is the same. Left: the real phone. Right: what the agent sees through the board's AirPlay mirror. The second shot is the pointer calibration. iPhone ──Screen Mirroring Wi-Fi ──▶ ESP32-S3: AirPlay receiver ──BLE──▶ ESP32 Agent app same iPhone ▲ own hotspot, H.264 passthrough decode → vision model → action └──────── USB HID mouse + keyboard ◀──────────── BLE commands ◀────────────────────┘ - Eyes — AirPlay to the board. The board opens its own Wi-Fi hotspot and appears in the phone's Screen Mirroring list as ESP32 Agent . It keeps the H.264 stream no decoding on the board and forwards it to the app over BLE. The phone keeps using cellular data for the model while it is on the board's hotspot. - Hands — USB HID. The board is a standard USB mouse and keyboard. With AssistiveTouch on, the mouse moves an on-screen pointer, so a click is a tap and a drag is a swipe. - Brain — the app. The app decodes the stream, sends screenshots to any OpenAI-compatible vision model, and runs a planner and an actor: tap, swipe, draw, type, press keys, go home, finish. It runs in the background while it works; the Dynamic Island shows what it is doing. - Closing the loop. The pointer is relative, so the app tracks it and re-homes it in a corner; before precise taps it wiggles the pointer, finds it on screen and corrects the miss. After each action it waits for the screen to settle and tells the model whether anything changed. A lost board, hotspot or mirroring link pauses the run and resumes it from the same step. - Review. Every run is kept on the phone: replay it step by step with the taps and swipes drawn on top. | Part | Notes | |---|---| | ESP32-S3 board | Tested with a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3 https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/xiao esp32s3 getting started/ plain version, 8 MB PSRAM; not Sense, not Plus . About $7. Any ESP32-S3 with native USB on its USB-C port and PSRAM should work. | | iPhone | iOS 18 or later, with cellular data the Wi-Fi is taken by the board's hotspot . USB-C models plug in directly; Lightning models need a Lightning to USB Camera Adapter. The phone powers the board. | | Vision model | Any OpenAI-compatible chat API that accepts images: a cloud API or your own server. | | Mac with Xcode | Only to flash the board and build the app once. Not needed at run time. | Install arduino-cli https://arduino.github.io/arduino-cli/ , the ESP32 core 3.3.x and NimBLE-Arduino 2.5.x, then: arduino-cli lib install "NimBLE-Arduino@2.5.1" hardware/flash.sh optional: serial port --debug Always build with flash.sh : it applies the BLE buffer sizes in hardware/hid bridge/nimble cfg.h . cp ios/Config/Local.xcconfig.example ios/Config/Local.xcconfig set DEVELOPMENT TEAM and IA BUNDLE ID open ios/IPhoneAgent.xcodeproj run the IPhoneAgent scheme on your iPhone The project is generated with XcodeGen https://github.com/yonaskolb/XcodeGen from ios/project.yml cd ios && xcodegen . A free Apple ID can sign it re-sign every 7 days . The one-tap hotspot join needs the Hotspot Configuration capability a paid account ; without it the app shows the hotspot password to join by hand. Plug the board into the iPhone and open ESP32 Agent . Setup walks through four steps and checks each one itself: 1. Plug Me In — pair the board over Bluetooth. 2. Let Me See the Screen — join the board's Wi-Fi, then Control Center → Screen Mirroring → ESP32 Agent . 3. Let Me Use the Pointer — turn on AssistiveTouch; the app calibrates the pointer by itself. 4. Give Me a Brain — enter your model endpoint and key stored in the Keychain . Type a goal for example "Open Settings and go to Wi-Fi" and press Start . Stop it from the Dynamic Island, or come back to the app. Siri, Shortcuts, widgets and Control Center can run saved tasks. - Any OpenAI-compatible vision endpoint works vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp, Ollama, cloud APIs . The app lists the endpoint's models and picks one; you can override it, and set a separate planner and actor model. - The prompts are plain text in prompts/ https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/blob/main/prompts and bundled with the app: edit them, rebuild, done. - The project was developed with nvidia/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-NVFP4 https://huggingface.co/nvidia/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-NVFP4 served on two DGX Sparks TensorFold https://github.com/MiaAI-Lab/Qwen3.8-Flash-Dual-DGX-Sparks-TensorFold . ios/ the app SwiftUI : BLE link, H.264 decode, agent, setup, replay, Live Activity, widgets; tests prompts/ planner / actor prompts used by the app hardware/ ESP32-S3 firmware Arduino : BLE GATT, hotspot, AirPlay receiver, USB HID; flash script, host tests, Mac BLE test harness hardware/tools docs/ BLE protocol, legacy version notes server/ legacy v0.1.0 computer-side server; not used by this version see server/README.md Debugging without the phone app: hardware/tools/board test.py plays the app over BLE from a Mac hardware/tools/README.md https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/blob/main/hardware/tools/README.md . Board ↔ app protocol: docs/ble-protocol.md https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/blob/main/docs/ble-protocol.md . - Drop the computer: the board mirrors and clicks, the app on the phone thinks - Landscape apps coordinates and calibration assume portrait - Non-ASCII text input e.g. Chinese through the iOS pinyin keyboard - Faster steps: several actions per model call, pointer checks only when needed - BLE carries about 300-500 kbps, so the screen is mirrored small 480×1040, ≤5 fps ; each step takes a few seconds, most of it the model. - iOS does not mirror some screens passcode entry, Apple Pay, DRM video ; the agent cannot see them. Mirroring stops when the phone locks. - While the agent runs, the phone's Wi-Fi is the board's hotspot no internet over it ; the model is reached over cellular data. - The app leaves itself with a private iOS API suspend ; fine for a self-built app, to be replaced before the App Store. - Keyboard input is ASCII only. Landscape apps are not supported yet. Only automate devices and accounts you own or are allowed to use, and respect the terms of the apps involved. The agent acts with your hands: watch it, and keep the stop button within reach. Issues and pull requests are welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md . Security reports: SECURITY.md https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/blob/main/SECURITY.md . | Project | Approach | Difference from this project | |---|---|---| | VersaiOS https://github.com/zhaodashuaibi/VersaiOS | UxPlay mirroring + ESP32-S3 Bluetooth mouse + vision model | Needs a computer; one tap per instruction | | ja1chen/actell https://github.com/ja1chen/actell | Agent app on the iPhone via Apple's CoreDevice debug channel | Needs Developer Mode and a Developer Disk Image | | AidenAI-IO/aiden-firmware https://github.com/AidenAI-IO/aiden-firmware | HDMI capture + USB keyboard/mouse + multimodal model | Capture hardware; mainly Android | | yoyicue/glassbox https://github.com/yoyicue/glassbox | PicoKVM HDMI capture + USB HID | macOS controller and PicoKVM | | boboabw/phone-agent https://github.com/boboabw/phone-agent | ESP32-S3 Bluetooth HID + AssistiveTouch, agent as an iPhone app | Closest to this version; this one also brings the eyes AirPlay on the board | | VKCOM/devicehub https://github.com/VKCOM/devicehub | ESP32 Bluetooth mouse for iOS device farms | Device-farm tooling, no AI agent | WebDriverAgent/XCUITest-based tools such as mobile-mcp https://github.com/mobile-next/mobile-mcp and Midscene https://github.com/web-infra-dev/midscene need a Mac and code signing. UxPlay https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay the AirPlay receiver the firmware's is ported from · NimBLE-Arduino https://github.com/h2zero/NimBLE-Arduino · Arduino ESP32 core https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32 and TinyUSB https://github.com/hathach/tinyusb MIT https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/blob/main/LICENSE , except hardware/hid bridge/src/airplay/ ported from UxPlay , which is GPL-3.0 https://github.com/onehumanbeing/esp32-iphone-agent/blob/main/hardware/hid bridge/src/airplay/LICENSE-GPL.md ; the firmware binary that links it is therefore distributed under GPL-3.0.