Introducing Hedge Connect

Paul Matthijs Lombert -

Our mobile companion app for Hedge

Update! Hedge Connect is now free 🎉

Know that feeling? You’re busy filming and offloading at the same time, somewhere off set. You find a minute of downtime between shots and run back, only to find your transfers still running. Or worse: they finished quite a while ago. On a busy day, that’s valuable offloading time lost 😣

Today, we’re fixing that. Meet Hedge Connect.

Hedge Connect is the companion app to Hedge. It runs on your smartphone or tablet, telling you if and why you’re needed back at the Mac. You receive real time notifications when a transfer has finished successfully, or when something is amiss.

Getting connected

Hedge Connect creates a secure connection with Hedge on your Mac. Setting it up is easy: just open Hedge’s preference pane for Connect. There you’ll find a unique access code.

Next, open Hedge Connect and enter your code. That’s all 👍

There’s no need for reconnecting in case of connectivity loss. Hedge and its Connect counterparts will find each other whenever one comes online, automagically.

Teams

Shoots often are a team effort, so Hedge Connect supports multiple connections out of the box. You can connect as many devices as you want. Keep everyone on the same page, and delegate tasks when you need to.

Security

To make sure no unwanted strangers can eavesdrop on your comms, we built in several security measures. Most of it is under the hood, but here’s what you need to know:

  • You can only connect when the macOS Connect prefpane is active.
  • Turning off Connect in Hedge stops sending notifications, but no connections will be closed.
  • Refreshing the access code forces all previous connections to close.
  • Reset on quit is on by default. Only uncheck this if you’re the sole user of your Mac and only have your own smart devices connected.

The Future

We feel that Hedge Connect is a starting point, just like Hedge for Mac was when we first released it. We’ve done a lot of major updates since then, and we expect to do the same with Hedge Connect.

Right now, Hedge Connect can only interact through push notifications. Convenient as it may be, we of course would like to give you a live feed of Hedge’s status and maybe even some kind of remote control. Let’s see where we can take this.

Where to get it

Hedge Connect is currently available for iOS, and works fine on both iPhones and iPads. You’ll need at least Hedge 1.5: either update, or download a fresh copy of Hedge here.

Hedge Connect is available in the App Store for free.

PS: Are you on Android and want to use Connect? Let us know 🤖