Astropad Workbench 1.3 rebuilds streaming for 30% speed gain, adds privacy curtain and crash auto-relaunch

Astropad Workbench is a remote desktop app that provides access to a Mac from an iPhone or iPad, with a particular focus on monitoring AI agents and controlling headless Mac mini setups. Version 1.3 is described as the largest update since the app launched earlier this year. The release targets the core pain points of unattended remote access: stream quality, session resilience, and physical-screen privacy.

The streaming system has been rebuilt for Apple silicon, and Astropad claims a 30% speed improvement. Content-aware encoding now adjusts how text and images are processed separately, which should improve text clarity and refresh rates during remote sessions. This matters most for workflows that involve reading dense output or monitoring agent activity, where blurry or laggy text is the primary friction point.

Two new operational features address session continuity and physical security. Watchdog runs in the background and relaunches Workbench after a crash, disconnection, or failure to respond, reducing the need for manual intervention on the remote machine. The privacy curtain conceals the Mac's display during a session, with three style options, display dimming, and blocking of local keyboard and mouse input, making it viable to control a Mac in a shared space without exposing screen contents.

The update also adds picture-in-picture so the remote Mac stays visible while working in another app, and iPad shortcut mapping that redirects commands normally handled by iPadOS to the connected Mac. Astropad reports 71 bug fixes spanning keyboard input, clipboard syncing, sign-ins, and other parts of the app, suggesting meaningful stability work alongside the feature additions.

Only one feed carried this story, so the performance claims and feature descriptions come solely from Astropad's own reporting through 9to5Mac. The 30% streaming figure and the 71 bug-fix count are vendor-supplied and have not been independently benchmarked in the available material.