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Nodes & Platforms

OpenClaw ships companion apps and node runtimes for macOS, iOS, and Android. The Gateway is the control plane; nodes execute device-local actions.

Companion apps

  • macOS app — menu bar control plane, Voice Wake / PTT, Talk Mode overlay, WebChat, debug tools, remote gateway control.
  • iOS node — Canvas, Voice Wake, Talk Mode, camera, screen recording, Bonjour pairing.
  • Android node — Canvas, Talk Mode, camera, screen recording, optional SMS.
  • macOS node mode — exposes system.run / system.notify plus canvas / camera.

See macOS and iOS & Android for details, and Nodes for the node protocol.

Why nodes?

Run the Gateway anywhere (including a small Linux VPS) while keeping device-local actions on the devices that have them. Pair the macOS app and / or iOS / Android apps as nodes, and the agent can call into them via node.invoke.

  • Gateway host runs the exec tool and channel connections.
  • Device nodes run device-local actions (system.run, camera, screen recording, notifications).

In short: exec runs where the Gateway lives; device actions run where the device lives.

Other platform targets

The repo includes platform notes for Windows (via WSL2), Linux, Raspberry Pi, Oracle Cloud, DigitalOcean, and more under docs/platforms/. WSL2 is strongly recommended for Windows installs.

See also