Anyone who keeps a Mac running in a corner to host AI agents or local models knows the problem: to see what a process is doing, you have to open an entire remote desktop. Beam, launched on October 19 by Hiten Shah and Sam Asante through their company Noats, takes a different approach: it brings a single window from another Mac onto the computer in front of you.
The remote window gets its own Dock icon, responds to Command-Tab, resizes in place and supports dragging files and local audio playback. The program keeps running on the original Mac. If one window is not enough, Beam can pull over a full display or the whole machine.
Image: Google
It requires Apple Silicon and macOS Sonoma or later on both machines, connecting over Wi-Fi or Tailscale. Traffic does not pass through Beam's servers: windows, keystrokes, clipboard and audio travel directly between the two Macs, encrypted. Pricing is split by role. Hosting a Mac and joining a share link are free. Using your own Mac to pull windows from another is free for 20 minutes a day, then costs $12 a month, $84 a year, or $199 for a lifetime license.
The difference from popular tools lies in the unit. Jump Desktop, Screens and Apple's Screen Sharing mirror the whole screen; Beam lifts one application. For someone running agents on a headless Mac mini, the benefit is less context switching: a terminal or browser session where the agent works can sit beside local apps without a second desktop.
The limits are clear. The app runs only on macOS, and it remains unproven whether per-window access beats full-screen sharing in multi-Mac setups. Teams already running local models or build machines on Macs will need to weigh the free tier against the cost of keeping those jobs visible.
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