Pair your phone to your PC.

Before you start

Five things. Gather them first and the rest is a straight line.

One word of jargon, glossed once. Tailscale is a free app that lets your own devices reach each other privately, wherever they are. It calls that little private network a tailnet. Your tailnet is just your devices. Nobody else is on it, and nothing on the open internet can see into it — Tailscale's public-sharing feature, Funnel, stays off for this setup. Messages are encrypted for your paired installation before anything relays them.

Step 1 — Tailscale on your PC

1. Download it. Go to tailscale.com/download and get the Windows version. Run the installer the way you run any other program. There is no terminal step and nothing to configure.
2. Find it in the system tray. Once it installs, a Tailscale icon appears in the tray at the bottom-right of your screen, near the clock. If you do not see it, click the small up arrow to show the hidden icons.
3. Sign in. Right-click that tray icon and choose Log in. Your browser opens. Sign in with Google, Microsoft, Apple, or GitHub — whichever account you will actually remember. Write down which one you picked. You need the same one on the phone in Step 2, and picking a different one there is the single most common thing that goes wrong.
4. Check it took. Open the tray icon again. You should see yourself signed in, Tailscale switched on, and this computer listed among your devices. That device list is the thing to trust. If your PC is on it, Step 1 is done.

Step 2 — Tailscale on your iPhone

1. Install the app. Get Tailscale from the App Store. It is free.
2. Open it and tap Get Started.
3. Say yes to both prompts. Your iPhone asks permission to add a VPN configuration, and asks to send you notifications. Allow both. The VPN prompt is just how iOS asks permission for any private-network app. Your browsing is not being routed through anybody. The notifications are how Tailscale tells you if you ever need to sign in again.
4. Log in with the same account. Tap Log in and sign in with the exact same account you used on the PC — same Google, same Microsoft, same Apple, same GitHub. Two different accounts means two separate private networks, and the phone and the PC will never find each other.
5. Switch Tailscale on, then check the list. Your phone and your PC should now both appear in the same device list, viewed from either device. Both devices, one list. That is the whole test.

Step 3 — Pair the PC and the phone

Both devices in front of you now. The first four steps happen on the PC, the last two on the phone.

1. On the PC, open Pocket Familiar, then "Settings", then "iPhone".
2. Enter the secure gateway address. Type in the address we set up with you. It always looks like this shape: https://your-device.your-tailnet.ts.net:8443 The PC app accepts private Tailscale addresses only. Public tunnels and ordinary web addresses are refused on purpose. If it refuses one, that is the privacy guarantee doing its job, not a fault.
3. Paste the one-time enrolment code. Paste the code we gave you. It is used once and then discarded — it is never saved into the PC app's files or your browser.
4. The PC app shows a QR code. It will tell you to scan it once in Pocket Familiar. Leave it on screen. Treat that square like a key to your house. Do not screenshot it, do not post it, do not send it to anyone — including us. It expires, and the expiry time is printed underneath it.
5. On the phone, open Pocket Familiar and choose "Pair with Companion". Allow camera access when it asks.
6. Scan the QR code off your PC screen. Then wait for the phone to say Linked through Tailscale. That line is the finish line. You are paired.

If something doesn't connect

Almost every failure is one of these, listed in the order they actually happen.

• Same account on both devices? This is the one, nine times out of ten. Open Tailscale on each device and confirm the signed-in account matches exactly. If it does not, sign out on the phone and sign back in with the PC's account.
• Is Tailscale actually switched on? Installed is not the same as running. Check it is on and connected on both devices, and that both show up in the same device list.
• Is Pocket Familiar open on the PC? The PC holds the companion, the memory, and the voice. The phone is a door. If the PC app is closed or the computer is asleep, the phone has nothing to reach.
• Did the PC app refuse the gateway address? Check it against the address we set up with you, character for character, including the port number at the end. The PC app refuses anything that is not a private Tailscale address, by design.
• QR code expired before you scanned it? The code is short-lived on purpose. Go back to "Settings" and "iPhone" in Pocket Familiar on your PC and run the pairing step again with both devices already in front of you. If you ever need to pair from scratch again, email us for a fresh enrolment code — each code is single-use.
• Link dropped after a restart? Stop. Do not tap Unlink, do not reset the local queue, and do not delete either app. Email us first — recovery is usually possible, and we would rather keep your history intact than have you start over.