Settings, App Lock & Troubleshooting

The Settings screen — under the More tab — is where you protect this device and tidy up after it. It has three jobs: lock the app behind a passcode or Face ID, manage the connection to your Mac, and hand you the controls to unpair when a phone moves on. This final chapter walks through each, then ends with a plain symptom-and-fix table for the few times the link between your phone and your Mac goes quiet.

6.1A tour of Settings

Open More → Settings. It is a single scrolling form, grouped into sections:

• App Lock — the passcode and biometric unlock for this app.
• Notifications — the current push status and an Enable notifications button if you have not allowed them yet.
• Connection — which Mac you are paired to, the address you are currently reaching it through, this device's key, and Unpair this device.
• Help & Guide and About — the in-app guide that mirrors this manual, and version information.

Everything that follows lives in one of those sections. None of it changes anything on the Mac; these settings are about this phone or tablet only.

6.2App Lock: a passcode for the app

FrontierStack Mobile is a remote control for real servers, so it is worth a lock of its own — separate from your device passcode. In App Lock, turn on Require passcode to open. You are asked to set a passcode (four digits or more) and confirm it. From then on the app launches locked: a full-screen gate asks you to Enter your passcode before it shows anything.

The app re-locks whenever you leave it — switch to another app, lock the phone, or send FrontierStack to the background — so a glance over your shoulder never exposes your fleet. To change the code later, tap Change passcode (you enter the current one first). To remove it, switch the toggle off and confirm with the current passcode.

6.3Face ID and Touch ID

Once a passcode is set, and if your device offers biometrics, an extra switch appears: Unlock with Face ID (or Unlock with Touch ID, matching your hardware). Turn it on and the lock screen offers biometric unlock the moment it appears — you rarely type the passcode at all. The passcode stays as the fallback for when a face or finger is not recognised.

Biometric unlock is a convenience layered on top of the passcode, not a replacement for it: you must set a passcode first, and removing the passcode turns biometrics off automatically. If your device has no Face ID or Touch ID, the switch simply does not appear and the passcode is the only gate.

6.4Unpairing this device

When you sell a phone, hand one to someone else, or simply want to start the connection over, use Unpair this device in the Connection section. You are asked to confirm; on confirmation the app forgets the pairing — the Mac's addresses, the pinned certificate, and this device's signing key — and returns to the pairing screen. To reconnect, scan the QR code from the Mac again.

Unpairing is the right first step, but it only clears this phone. The Mac still lists the device as paired until you remove it there. For a phone that is lost or no longer yours, do both.

6.5Troubleshooting

Most trouble is connectivity: the phone and the Mac can't find each other, or a control is greyed out because of where things stand on the Mac. Work down the table, then read the notes below it.

6.6When you can't reach the Mac

The app tries the addresses captured when you paired, in order: your home or office network first, then Tailscale, then a Cloudflare tunnel. If none answers, the Fleet tab's status dot shows offline. Run through the obvious causes in order. Is FrontierStack actually open on the Mac, with its control server switched on? Are you on the same Wi-Fi? If you are away from home, is Tailscale connected on both the phone and the Mac (or a subnet router), or has the Mac enabled a Cloudflare tunnel? A pull-to-refresh on the Fleet tab forces the app to retry every path. The Reached via line in Settings tells you which address is currently working, which is a quick way to confirm the link is alive.

6.7Greyed-out controls and missing alerts

If you can see status but the Start/Stop buttons do nothing, the app isn't broken — it is telling you the action isn't permitted right now. Either the Mac is locked at its login window, in which case it won't act on a remote command until someone unlocks it, or this device's permission level is too low. Raise the level on the Mac under the Paired Devices pane, or pick up a device that already has the rights.

For alerts, remember the chain has two ends. The phone has to have notifications enabled — Enable notifications in Settings, and allow them when iOS prompts — and the Mac (or its push relay) has to be online to send them. If alerts simply stop arriving, the most common reason is that the Mac went to sleep or offline; wake it and confirm it is reachable from the Fleet tab.

6.8Where to go from here

That is the whole companion app: pair once from the Mac, watch your fleet from anywhere, act when your permission level allows, and keep the phone itself locked. You have a faithful, secure window onto everything FrontierStack runs — in your pocket.

For more, the in-app Help & Guide (Settings ▸ Help & Guide) mirrors this manual and is always current with your version of the app. The desktop app does the heavy lifting; its own manual covers every pane and service in depth — start at the FrontierStack manual. And whenever you want the latest news, downloads or support, visit frontierstack.app. Thank you for running your servers with FrontierStack.