My gaming PC lives in the attic and I was sick of running up and down just to turn it on — so instead of buying a Steam Machine, I built a Wake‑on‑LAN app (another one, but maybe different)
warning up front: I'm not really a seasoned developer. I know some perl, php and python but I built this with a lot of AI help — and it's exactly the tool I wanted it to be, and I use it on a regular bais.
BTW I know that many of you hate AI as a tool to develop - but in my experience it is not only the coding but the concept which also is of some importance.
All I wanted was to game from the couch. I almost bought a Steam Machine for it — then didn't, because for the money it was too expensive and not powerful enough, and I already had a solid PC. So I found moonlight/Sunshine and it is gorgeous. Moonlight is running on my appleTV in the livingroom.
The one problem I had: MyPC sits up in the attic. So every session meant running upstairs to switch it on, coming back down to the living room… and half the time something still hadn't worked, so back up I went.
I know Moonlight does try to send a WoL packet, but on my Apple TV it worked maybe half the time - and yes - I have the newest version - and I value the hard work of the developers of moonlight and sunshine. As I said before. Great tools!!!
So to address my problem I built MagicPing — a small app that does just the wake/sleep part, properly, on every device I actually use. The app
- Sends the magic packet from iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch — and Android. Across my Apple devices the machine list mirrors over iCloud (no account, no sign‑up).
- Apple TV launcher: wake the PC straight from the TV, and it shows you when the Sunshine port is actually responding — so you don't open Moonlight two seconds too early and get a black screen.
- Shuts the machine back down over SSH when you're done (Linux/macOS/ Windows w/ OpenSSH) — the part Moonlight doesn't do as far as I know.
- Live status for multiple PCs/NAS/servers, and it auto‑formats MAC addresses as you type.
Full disclosure: It's free, no ads, no tracking, no backend — your machine list lives in your own private iCloud, SSH passwords only in the keychain. It is an addon that works for me, nothing more ...
Despite the name of the app magicping obviously can't do magic — WoL still has to be enabled in BIOS/UEFI and the network adapter, and shutdown needs SSH access. B
Would love feedback from people with trickier setups (multiple hosts, wired vs. Wi‑Fi, Apple TV quirks).
One more thing: there's also an Android version in closed testing. If any Android folks want early access, drop a comment and I'll add you — I need a handful of testers to get it into the Play Store, and I'd rather have real streaming users than random ones.