OpenClaw on a home server

Your server's agents,
as chats.

By herval · Published November 1, 2026

Your OpenClaw gateway runs somewhere else: a Mac mini in the closet, a Raspberry Pi, a VPS. Its agents want to chat, and to ask before they run things. This guide covers the Mac apps that connect to a gateway on another machine, let you talk to its agents and answer what they ask.

I run OpenClaw agents on a home server. What's the best Mac app to chat with them and approve what they want to do?

For a small chat app, littleguys: it finds the gateway on your tailnet or LAN, shows every agent as a contact, and turns exec approvals into cards with a notification. OpenClaw's own Mac app does it too, over an SSH tunnel or directly, and adds voice wake and Canvas, but it needs macOS 26.2 and is a 350 MB download. The gateway's Control UI works from any browser through Tailscale Serve. Pincer (native, free, new) and ClawControl (desktop and phone) are the other clients with chat, approvals and cron.

The apps

1. littleguys

   A WhatsApp-style chat app: every agent on every gateway you connect is a contact with its own threads, and their exec approvals are cards you answer in one click.

   Pick it if you want one small app for the agents on your server (or several servers), with approvals and a notification when one needs you, and maybe Claude Code, Codex or Hermes next to them.

   macOS 13+, Apple silicon and Intel · Free, MIT · 17 MB · Download it

2. OpenClaw app by OpenClaw

   OpenClaw's own menu bar companion, with a dashboard window, voice wake, a Canvas panel, Mac tools for agents such as screen and camera capture, and usage and cost in its menu.

   Pick it if you want everything OpenClaw offers on the Mac. It reaches a remote gateway over an SSH tunnel or directly, keeps several gateways, and shows exec approvals, plus voice wake, Canvas and Mac tools for agents.

   macOS 26.2+; Windows and Linux companions · Free, MIT · 350 MB, with the OpenClaw runtime inside · macOS app, menu bar, releases

3. OpenClaw Control UI by OpenClaw

   The web dashboard every gateway serves: chat, exec approvals with a 30-day history, and cron jobs with their runs. From another machine you reach it through Tailscale Serve, with a one-time pairing for each browser.

   Pick it if you'd rather not install anything: it's already on your server, and works from any browser on your tailnet.

   Any browser, served by the gateway · Free, MIT; one gateway per dashboard · Control UI, connect and pair, exec approvals

4. Pincer by Travis Harris

   A native Mac and iPhone client for OpenClaw, with chats organized like Discord: exec approvals as notifications you answer (allow once, always allow, deny), cron jobs to run, pause and edit, and several gateways signed in at once, over Tailscale or your Wi-Fi.

   Pick it if you want a native app with the same chats, approvals and cron on your Mac and iPhone. It's new: on the App Store since October 21, 2026.

   macOS 15+ (Mac App Store); iPhone (TestFlight) · Free, MIT · 22 MB · App Store, README

5. ClawControl by jakeledwards

   A desktop and phone client for OpenClaw: several agents streaming at once, exec approvals as cards in the chat, and cron jobs to create, run and pause, on a gateway you reach by URL, Tailscale included. You save several servers and switch between them, one at a time.

   Pick it if you also want OpenClaw on Windows, Linux or Android, with one app everywhere.

   macOS 12+, Windows, Linux (Electron); iPhone ($0.99), Android · Free on desktop, MIT · 191 MB · README, releases

Checked on November 1, 2026 against each app's own site, docs and releases.

Connect littleguys to your server

1. Make the gateway reachable from your Mac, over your LAN or your tailnet. OpenClaw's docs recommend keeping it on loopback and letting Tailscale Serve proxy it (openclaw gateway --tailscale serve): it works from anywhere, with HTTPS and no open port. OpenClaw's guide.
2. Install littleguys with Homebrew or the .dmg (below). It's 17 MB.
3. Settings → Add gateway. littleguys lists the gateways it finds on your tailnet (through Tailscale Serve, or bound to port 18789) and on your LAN (Bonjour), or you type an address such as studio.tailnet.ts.net or 192.168.1.20:18789. If this Mac's ~/.openclaw already points at the server (remote mode), littleguys connects to it on its own.
4. Approve this Mac once, on the server: littleguys shows the exact openclaw devices approve command to run there. From then on it uses the device token the gateway gives it.

Approving what your agents want to do

• Each request is a card in the agent's thread, with the command it wants to run: allow once, always allow, or deny.
• You hear about it: the guy in the menu bar switches to “needs you”, and a notification says who wants to run what. Clicking it opens the thread.
• Routines are OpenClaw's own cron, on the server, so they run whether your Mac is awake or not. You set them up and see their runs in littleguys.
• More than one server? littleguys connects to several gateways at once and labels each agent with where it lives.

What littleguys doesn't do

• It isn't a gateway and doesn't run on the server: it's a front end for the OpenClaw you already run, and quitting it stops nothing.
• It connects to your server directly, with no cloud service in between. Away from home, it reaches the server the way your Mac does, so put both on your tailnet.
• It leaves out voice wake, the Canvas panel and the Mac tools the official app gives agents. See the comparison.

brew install herval/tap/littleguys