Questions first. Then a real person.

Downloading, reading, editing, previewing and snapshots are free. Writing to a device needs a license: US$19, once, for one person on up to five Macs they use, with every 1.x update included. Purchasing opens with ScreenWright 1.0. Pricing →

Yes. Ask within 14 days of buying and you get your money back, for any reason. Ask us through the support page, or ask Paddle directly from your receipt email. There's no free trial of writing, so this is how you try it for real. Refund Policy →

Up to five of the Macs you use, at home and at work, at the same time. The first time you enter your key on a Mac, ScreenWright activates it with our license server once; after that it works offline. Moving to a new Mac? Deactivate an old one from inside ScreenWright, or ask us through the support page. A license is for one person, so other people need their own. Use it with as many iPhones and iPads as you own or manage.

It's possible. ScreenWright uses parts of iOS that Apple doesn't document, and any iOS update can change them. Every write is still snapshotted first and read back after, and a result that doesn't match the plan is reported as unclean, never as success. We plan on updates after major iOS releases and ship them through the app's updater, but we can't promise a fix or a date. Before you buy, the free features show you whether it works with your device today. What the terms say →

A Mac on macOS 15 or later and an iPhone or iPad paired with an ordinary “Trust This Computer” tap. No MDM, no jailbreak, no supervision. Tested on an iPhone 16 Pro on iOS 27.0, and used with an iPad. iPad support is still being validated. The grid is read from the device.

Yes. With the cable in, turn on “Show this iPhone when on Wi-Fi” in Finder once; after that, same network, no cable. A Wi-Fi-visible device appears twice in the picker (a USB row and a Wi-Fi row) and you choose the link. Writes over Wi-Fi are flagged everywhere they appear. A locked, unplugged iPhone naps its Wi-Fi, so connecting retries for about 30 seconds and the app reconnects in place with your edits intact.

Start with the cable: plug the phone into your Mac, try another cable or port, and click Refresh in the device picker. The first time, unlock the phone, tap Trust This Computer and enter your passcode. If the phone's Location & Privacy settings were reset, it has forgotten every computer it trusted; plug in again and tap Trust. Over Wi-Fi, the phone has to be on the same network as your Mac, with “Show this iPhone when on Wi-Fi” turned on in Finder. A locked phone's Wi-Fi listing comes and goes, and after the phone restarts it can need one USB connection before it reappears.

Because it's reachable two ways. With Wi-Fi visibility on, the device picker lists the same device once for USB and once for Wi-Fi: same device, two links. Pick the one you want to use. Writes over Wi-Fi are flagged everywhere they appear.

Not for everyday use. Reads and writes work with the phone locked, over USB and over Wi-Fi. Pairing is the exception: the first time, you unlock the phone to tap Trust This Computer and enter your passcode. Unplugged, a locked iPhone naps its Wi-Fi between uses, so connecting can take about 30 seconds of retries. If the link drops while you edit, the app asks you to unlock the phone or plug it in, keeps your edits, and reconnects.

Apps, pages, folders, the dock, and moving, resizing or removing existing widgets. Removing a widget is one-way: a snapshot can't bring it back, so add it again on the device. Not: creating widgets, wallpaper, icon appearance, blank slots, or removing an app from the home screen. SpringBoard puts omitted apps back, and the validator warns rather than pretends.

Every write snapshots the current layout to your Mac first, per device; at least the last 20 are kept. Stage one in the app and it goes through the same Review sheet as any edit; an agent previews with preview_restore_snapshot, then uses restore_snapshot, which takes a fresh snapshot first, so rolling back is itself reversible. One exception: a snapshot can't bring back a widget you removed; add it again on the device. Last resort, on the phone: Settings › General › Transfer or Reset iPhone › Reset › Reset Home Screen Layout.

After every write, ScreenWright reads the home screen back and compares it with what it predicted. The Report sheet then says one of three things:

• Verified clean. The phone matches the plan.
• Applied with predicted normalizations. The phone adjusted the layout the way ScreenWright expected, for example by dropping an app that isn't installed on it, and everything else matches. The sheet lists what was adjusted.
• Unclean. The read-back doesn't match the prediction. That's reported as a problem, never as success, with the path of the snapshot taken before the write.

After an unclean write, the editor shows what's on the phone now. To undo the write, restore the snapshot from before it: open Snapshots, stage it, and apply it through the Review sheet. If you need help, use the form below and paste the snapshot path the Report sheet names.

iOS won't let a connected Mac take an app off the home screen. If a layout leaves out an app that's on the home screen, the phone puts it back at the end of the page it was on. ScreenWright warns you about that before the write instead of pretending, and the editor has no way to remove an app. To take one off the home screen, do it on the phone: touch and hold the app, tap Remove App, then Remove from Home Screen. It stays installed, in the App Library.

No. Existing widgets can be moved, resized or removed, but not created: a widget made up on the Mac shows up on the phone as a dead blank tile, so ScreenWright refuses to write one. Every widget, Smart Stacks included, is written back exactly as the phone sent it apart from its size, so what's inside a Smart Stack stays as it is. Add the widget, or change the stack, on the phone, then arrange it in ScreenWright. Removing a widget is one-way: a snapshot can't bring it back.

Recent iPhone wallpapers aren't one picture. They're layered posters, and iOS gives a connected Mac no flattened version; on iOS 27, even asking for it drops the connection. So ScreenWright doesn't ask, and draws a plain background behind an iPhone layout. An iPad still provides a flat wallpaper image, which ScreenWright reads once while it's open, over a separate, short-lived connection. If that read fails, the iPad gets the plain background too. The layout is the same either way; only the backdrop differs.

No. Icon appearance is a setting on the phone, and it isn't part of what iOS shares with a connected Mac, so ScreenWright can't change it or tell which look you use. ScreenWright asks the phone for each app's icon and shows the image it gets back; there's no way to ask for the dark or tinted version, so the editor's icons may not match a phone set to those. Change the look on the phone.

No. What iOS gives a connected Mac is the home screen pages and the dock. Hidden apps, Today View widgets and the App Library's order aren't in it, so ScreenWright can't see or change them. Blank slots and free placement aren't either: each page is filled in order. Do those on the phone.

No. The app is a complete editor on its own. The MCP server is its own executable that runs with the app closed; it ships inside ScreenWright.app, and both link the same HomeScreenKit library, so an agent gets the same planner and verified writer you do.

Any MCP client that can run a local server over stdio. The MCP reference shows how to register it with Claude Code and Claude Desktop; other clients register the same path the same way. Claude Code is where it has been exercised. In ScreenWright, Help › Set Up MCP Server copies the exact path for your copy. The read and preview tools are free; the write tools need a license. Install and register →

Agent writes go through the same snapshot, preview and read-back checks as yours, and Write History shows you recent ones afterwards, reconstructed from their snapshots. Agents can still be wrong: a write that verified clean matches the agent's plan, not necessarily what you wanted. It's off by default: turn on Confirm agent writes in ScreenWright's settings and every agent write waits for you to click Allow. You're responsible for the agents you connect.

Open Write History in the app (⌘Y, or the History button in the editor). It's a view of recent changes, reconstructed from the snapshot every write leaves on your Mac: newest first, who made each write, as a badge (AGENT, APP, or CLI), when, and what changed, in the same sentences the Review sheet uses. It covers writes made while the app was closed and lists them with the phone unplugged, though the newest write's changes need the phone connected. It cannot tell you whether a write verified clean, and anything you moved by hand between two writes is counted with the earlier one. Write History →

Your layouts are never uploaded to us. Your layouts, snapshots, app list and icons stay on your Mac, and the app has no accounts, analytics or telemetry. Here is what does leave your Mac:

• Licensing. Activating or deactivating a Mac sends our license server your key and a random installation identifier linked to your license. After activation, your license is checked on your Mac, offline.
• Update checks. The app asks screenwright.com for new versions, which shows our server your IP address and the app's version. You can turn automatic checks off.
• This website. We count visits with our own cookieless analytics.
• Support. The support form sends what you type to the services that deliver it.

None of these carries anything about your phone or your layout. If you connect an AI agent, what the agent reads goes to that agent's provider, so pick agents you trust. Privacy Policy →

No. It changes the arrangement only. It doesn't install, delete or update apps, and it can't see inside them: no messages, photos or app data. From the phone it reads the home screen layout, the list of installed apps (their identifiers and names), app icons, and the device's name, model, iOS version and identifier. Privacy Policy →

Talking to an iPhone means connecting to usbmuxd's UNIX socket. The App Sandbox forbids that, and no entitlement unlocks it (researched, not assumed). So ScreenWright ships the way iMazing, AnyTrans, iExplorer and 3uTools do: Developer ID signed, notarized, Hardened Runtime on, sandbox off. How it's built →

Almost nothing it relies on exists there:

• A different connection, top to bottom. ScreenWright speaks Apple's device protocol: usbmux, then lockdown, then an encrypted session with SpringBoard's layout service. Android phones talk to a computer over ADB, and none of it carries over.
• No single Android home screen. The home screen is a replaceable app, the launcher (Pixel Launcher, Samsung's One UI Home, Nova and many more), and each keeps its layout in its own private format that can change from version to version.
• The layout is locked inside the launcher. It lives in the launcher's private app storage, which a computer can't read or write over USB without rooting the phone.
• No way to write a layout. An iPhone accepts a whole new layout from a paired computer. On Android, the closest thing is an app running on the phone asking the launcher to add one shortcut or widget, if that launcher supports it, usually with you confirming. No app can move an icon, and only you can remove a pinned shortcut.
• The workarounds defeat the point. Rooting gives up the phone's security model, and shipping our own launcher would mean editing our home screen, not yours.