Stream Your Mac Screen From Anywhere
Updated October 2026 · 4 min read
Short answer: yes, with Tailscale.
Streaming on your home Wi-Fi is free. Streaming from anywhere else is part of Beam Unlimited. Put your Mac and your iPhone or iPad on the same Tailscale network and Beam can reach your Mac from a café, a train or another country. There is nothing to port-forward and no Beam server in between. Tailscale connects the two devices directly when it can, and through its own encrypted relay when it can't.
Why Beam needs help away from home
At home, Beam finds your Mac with Bonjour, the same local discovery that finds printers and AirPlay speakers. It needs no setup.
Bonjour stops at your router, though. Once you leave the house, Beam has no way to find your Mac, even though the Mac would happily take the connection. Finding it is the only problem to solve.
Tailscale solves it by giving each of your devices a private address that works from anywhere. Beacon tells your phone its Tailscale address, and Beam uses that address whenever it can't see the Mac on the local network.
Setting it up
Tailscale is free for personal use and takes a few minutes.
- Install Tailscale on your Mac and sign in.
- Install Tailscale on your iPhone or iPad and sign in with the same account. Devices can only reach each other inside one account's network.
- While you're still at home, start a stream in Beam once. Beacon passes along its Tailscale address during that connection, so there's nothing to type. It does this every time you stream, so the address stays current if it ever changes.
- Next time you're out, make sure Tailscale is connected on both devices and tap Start Beam as usual.
If Beam still can't find your Mac when you're away, open Settings in Beam, go to Away From Home, and tap Set Up Automatically while you're on the same Wi-Fi as the Mac. If that fails too, you can type the address in by hand. Beacon shows it in its Settings window, on the Devices tab.
The settings that matter
- Connect When Away turns remote streaming on or off. With it off, Beam only looks on your local Wi-Fi and keeps the address for later.
- Quality When Away is a separate quality setting for remote streams, so your home setting can stay high. Auto is a good choice here, because it adapts to what the connection can carry. Beam warns you if the setting looks too high for the link you're on.
- Force Remote Host, under Advanced, makes Beam use the Tailscale address even when the Mac is on the same Wi-Fi. Useful for testing your remote setup before you leave the house.
What the connection badge means
When you stream from outside your home network, Beam shows a small badge in the corner. It tells you which kind of route you got, because they feel very different.
- Direct means your phone and your Mac are talking to each other with nothing in between. This is the good one. It can carry full quality, and sound stays in step.
- Negotiating means Tailscale is still working out the best route. That's normal for the first few seconds, and it usually turns green on its own.
- Relayed means the two devices couldn't reach each other directly, so the traffic is going through a Tailscale relay server. It still works, but it is much slower, and the picture may stutter or look soft.
You don't need to do anything with the badge. It's there so that when a stream feels off, you can tell whether it's the connection or the app.
If it stays on Relayed
Two devices usually find a direct route by themselves. When they can't, the home router is almost always the reason. Two things tend to fix it:
- Turn on UPnP or NAT-PMP in your router settings. Both let apps ask the router to accept a connection, and Tailscale uses them automatically when they're available.
- Make sure your home internet has IPv6 turned on. Most connections do these days, and IPv6 often gives the easiest direct path.
Neither of these opens your Mac to the internet. Only devices signed in to your own Tailscale account can connect.
If the stream pauses
If the picture freezes and blurs with a spinner over it, Beam lost the connection and is getting it back. Switching from Wi-Fi to mobile data does this, and so does walking back into the house, because the route has to be worked out again. It usually recovers within a few seconds. If it can't, Beam takes you back to the home screen instead of leaving a frozen picture up.
What to expect
Your Mac needs to be awake with Beacon running, same as at home. Beam still prefers your local network whenever it can see the Mac, so nothing changes when you get back.
Picture quality is the big difference. Home Wi-Fi carries far more than most internet connections, and a relayed route carries less again. If a remote stream stutters, lower Quality When Away. 480p or 720p at 30 fps is usually the sweet spot on a typical connection, and lower still on mobile data. More on picking settings in the quality settings guide.
Privacy
Beam runs no servers anywhere in the stream path, at home or away. Away from home, Tailscale encrypts everything between your two devices with WireGuard. On a direct route the traffic goes straight from one device to the other. On a relayed route it passes through a Tailscale server that forwards it without being able to read it. Tailscale is a service you sign in to yourself, under its own privacy policy. Beam's side is covered in the Beam privacy policy.
Frequently asked questions
Can Beam stream my Mac screen when I am away from home?
Yes, with Beam Unlimited and Tailscale on both devices. Streaming at home is free.
Do I need to configure anything?
Usually not. Stream once at home and Beacon hands over its Tailscale address. If not, use Set Up Automatically in Beam's settings.
Does remote streaming go through a cloud service?
Not a Beam one. Tailscale connects your devices directly when it can, and otherwise through its own encrypted relay.
Will it look as good as at home?
Usually not. Use a lower Quality When Away, or Auto, and it will adapt to the connection.
