PhonePad 1.1.0 · 9 November 2026

What's new in 1.1

No Wi-Fi router? Play over the phone's own hotspot or USB tethering. The PC now tells you when Windows is in the way, and pairing is built so nothing on your network can break it.

Play over the phone's hotspot or USB tethering

Turn on the phone's hotspot and connect the PC to it, or plug the phone in and turn on USB tethering. PhonePad finds the PC over either.

Before, the phone only searched the network Android uses for the internet, and when the phone is sharing its connection that is mobile data, so the PC was never found (issue #2). It now searches every local network it is part of, including the ones it is providing, and leaves mobile data out so the search never goes to your carrier.

It is free, like everything that makes the controller reach the PC. The setup guide has the steps.

The companion tells you when Windows is blocking PhonePad

Windows treats any network it has not seen before as public, and blocks phones from reaching PhonePad there. That was the other half of "No PC found" on a hotspot, and nothing said so.

Now the companion shows Windows is blocking PhonePad, names the network, and says why. For your own phone's hotspot or tethering it offers Make private: one administrator prompt, and only that network is trusted. A Wi-Fi hotspot is remembered after that. With USB tethering, many phones present a new network each time tethering starts, so Windows may ask again.

PhonePad does not open its ports on public networks in general. That was suggested as a fix, and it would have included every café, hotel and airport network the PC ever joins.

Pairing that cannot be broken offline

In 1.0, a device on the same network could recover the six-digit code from the PC's first pairing reply while the pairing window was open, and pair itself as a trusted phone. In 1.1 each side commits to its proof of the code before the other reveals one, and the PC shows a new code after every attempt, so a device without the code gets one guess per code, and pairing stops after five.

If you ever paired while running 1.0 on a network you do not control, look at Trusted phones in the companion and forget anything you do not recognise. The details are in SECURITY.md.

Ads, kept out of the way

PhonePad stays free. The app's home, layouts and settings screens have one ad strip at the bottom: never on the controller, never over a button, and not at all where there is no room for it, such as a phone held sideways. The companion has one sponsor strip. Where the law asks, Google's consent message comes first, and your choice can be changed in Settings → Ads. What each strip sends is in the privacy policy.

Smaller things

• If USB tethering is switched off and on mid-game, the phone reconnects by itself instead of waiting on "reconnecting" until restarted.
• The phone lists each network it is on by what it is: Wi-Fi, Hotspot, USB tethering. It used to call a mobile-data address "Wi-Fi address".
• The companion shows its version, which networks the PC is on, and how many search probes it has heard from phones, which tells a network problem apart from everything else.

Not in this release

Several phones as separate controllers, for local multiplayer, is planned for 1.2. It fits the design, and it touches the part that guarantees a dropped phone can never leave a button held, so it gets a release of its own. The plan is public.

Every change is in the changelog and on the release page.