Grok Build on your phone: watch your runs remotely beta
xAI's Grok Build — the grok CLI/TUI powered by Grok 4.5 — runs
long agent sessions right in your terminal, and like every coding agent it works best when you
can tell, without being at the desk, whether a run is still going, waiting, or done — and how
much of your SuperGrok allowance it has burned. This page covers the honest ways to do that
from a phone, and what each is actually good at. (Disclosure up front: DevFob, one of the
options below, is our product — and Grok support is new, so we're precise about what it does.)
What you actually want to see from a phone
A raw terminal mirrored to a phone technically shows everything and practically tells you nothing — at phone size you're squinting at a scrollback trying to work out the state. What's worth having on glass is the state itself:
- Which Grok sessions are running right now, and in which project.
- What each is doing and how long it's been at it — is it thinking, or stuck?
- The last reply, so you can tell a finished run from a stalled one at a glance.
- Your rate-limit / usage windows — SuperGrok and X Premium+ allowances are per-account, and nothing kills momentum like discovering the window was gone an hour ago.
Option 1: ssh / mosh + tmux — free and manual
Run grok inside tmux on the Mac, then ssh (or
mosh) in from a phone terminal like Blink or
Termius and attach. It costs nothing and no third party sees your session. The rough parts are
the usual ones: nothing notifies you — you poll by reattaching; you need reachable ssh
from wherever you are (VPN or Tailscale); the Mac has to stay awake on its own; and reading
state off a tiny scrollback is exactly the squinting problem above. If you live in a terminal
and check in on your own schedule, this may be all you need.
Option 2: DevFob — mirror your local Grok sessions to your phone (that's us)
DevFob is a Mac menu-bar app that mirrors the agent sessions running on your Mac to free
companion apps on iPhone, Apple Watch, Android, and Wear OS. It reads Grok Build's own on-disk
session logs (the ones under ~/.grok/sessions), so with no setup beyond installing
the Mac app your phone shows each Grok run: which sessions are live, what each is doing, how
long it's been going, the last reply, and the rate-limit windows — a glance tells you
working / waiting / done. Grok Build shows up right next to your Claude Code and Codex sessions
in one list.
Two things to be straight about, because Grok support is beta: DevFob is a monitor for Grok — answering questions and approving plans from the phone is Claude Code today (you still answer Grok at the Mac), and Grok's own usage endpoint is still stabilising upstream, so the usage read is best-effort from local session data. What you get today is honest, glanceable monitoring and usage — not remote control.
The architecture is the opposite of a relay: phone and Mac talk directly over your LAN or the Mac's hotspot — Curve25519 pairing, every frame sealed with ChaCha20-Poly1305, no cloud, no account, zero app analytics, license check offline. Nomad mode keeps the Mac awake and reachable lid-closed in a bag. $15 once for the Mac app, 14-day full trial, free updates; phone and watch apps are free (Android is in closed beta). macOS 14+.
| ssh + tmux | DevFob beta | |
|---|---|---|
| Where Grok runs | Your Mac — your checkout, env, tools. | Your Mac — DevFob mirrors the local grok session. |
| See state at a glance | Squint at a mirrored scrollback. | Yes — running / waiting / done, per session, plus last reply. |
| Usage / rate-limit windows | Whatever /usage printed, if you scroll to it. | On glass — best-effort SuperGrok windows (beta). |
| Answer prompts from phone | Type at the prompt over ssh. | Not for Grok yet — you answer at the Mac. (Tappable answers are Claude Code today.) |
| Privacy | No third party (beyond your VPN). | Local-only, end-to-end encrypted; session content never leaves your devices. |
| Watch app | No. | Yes — Apple Watch & Wear OS. |
| Cost | Free. | $15 once (launch price; $29 from Aug 14), 14-day trial; companion apps free. |
Where ssh + tmux is the better pick: you live in a terminal, you check runs on your
own schedule, you're comfortable driving grok over ssh, and you don't want to pay
for or install anything. That's a legitimate setup and it's free.
Where DevFob is the better pick: you want the state on glass without squinting — a push-button glance at which Grok runs are alive, what they're doing, and your remaining SuperGrok window — on your phone or your wrist, with nothing routed through a cloud; and you run Grok alongside Claude Code and Codex and want one mirror for all three.
Which "Grok" is this?
This is xAI's official Grok Build — the grok binary you install from
x.ai/cli, which stores each session under ~/.grok/sessions. There's
also a separate community grok-cli that shares the ~/.grok directory
but a different file layout; DevFob reads the official Grok Build session format. If you're on
the community CLI and want it supported too, tell us.
Grok Build behavior (session storage, SuperGrok / X Premium+ usage) as of July 2026 — xAI iterates quickly, and DevFob's Grok support is beta, so specifics may change; check xAI's docs for current details. Spotted something outdated or unfair? Tell us and we'll fix it. Also useful: Codex on your phone and Claude Code on your phone.