Connections¶

What it does¶

Connections owns the host listener, named sessions, and Set Up a New Mac… portal. On the macOS host it is the landing page of the Connections shelf. The PowerPC Workshop separately provides Preferences and Connection pages, and NOW-68K keeps connection controls in its main window.

The macOS application's own appearance, and a set of preferences that used to sit inside individual modules, no longer live in this module. Choose New Old World > Settings… or press Command-, to open the separate Settings window: a pill switcher over Appearance (System, Light, or Dark theme; Off, Clear, or Regular Liquid Glass — the glass choices fall back to native material on macOS 13–25 and when Reduce Transparency or Increase Contrast is enabled), Sidebar (row density, icon collapse, reset layout), MCP (whether each transport starts automatically), Web (page-compatibility mode and the private-destinations safety toggle), Logs (whether the event log also writes to disk), and Defaults for New Connections (what a Continuity pairing with a Mac it has never seen before starts with). Several modules — MCP, Web, Logs — carry their own Settings… button that opens this window already on their tab. Files and Screenshots keep their own in-module settings panes; Continuity and Mirror keep their per-machine controls in-module.

Availability¶

All three applications expose the connection state they own. Preference depth differs; NOW-68K intentionally keeps its compact connection UI rather than the PowerPC preference model.

The host keeps the sidebar arrangement and selected module when a guest disconnects. Host-owned pages remain available, pages with retained machine information identify it as offline, and live-only pages route recovery here or offer Start Listening.

On the modern Mac¶

The host starts and stops the listener, names simultaneous guests, selects the active session, and reports duplicate-name or capacity refusals. Its setup sheet can generate preferences, assemble a fork-preserving setup disk from selected packages, and serve it temporarily over old-browser-compatible HTTP.

On the classic Mac¶

PowerPC carries separate Connection and Preferences pages. Its Connection page also compares the running application and active Extension with the exact artifacts published by the connected host. A different development build of the same release version is visible rather than collapsed into “current.” NOW-68K shows host, port, timeout, health, status, and retained console information in one window; it does not implement the update family.

Common tasks¶

The listener is plaintext and unauthenticated. Bind and advertise it only on a trusted LAN; never forward it through a router.

The setup portal is also plaintext. It exposes fixed download routes rather than uploads or directory listings; stop it when onboarding is complete.

Update artifacts are currently unsigned. The host recomputes their SHA-256 before advertising them and the guest verifies the transferred bytes, but that proves integrity against the host's manifest, not publisher authenticity. The local Connection page requires an explicit confirmation; console and remote command paths cannot bypass it.

Failure states¶

Revision mismatch, duplicate machine name, host unreachable, timeout, listener busy, capacity reached, and stale selected session retain exact reasons. Setup also retains missing-package, checksum-refusal, stale-selection, image build, archive-tool, and server-start failures instead of offering a partial disk as complete.

Updates retain no-offer, busy-transfer, identity mismatch, checksum mismatch, disk-space, Finder-identity, exchange, and relaunch/restart states rather than presenting a downloaded file as installed.

Extension restart state survives an application relaunch and clears only when a later boot reports the installed resident identity active. On launch, PowerPC also warns when it detects CarbonLib below the supported 1.6 floor; Don't Warn Again suppresses that advisory without changing CarbonLib.

Installing an application update never relaunches it, and installing an extension update never restarts the guest Mac — the classic side keeps running the old build until a person quits and launches it again, or restarts it. A row carries a Needs relaunch badge from the moment an install finishes until this Mac actually sees a reconnect report the new build, and that state survives the disconnect a real relaunch causes: it is tracked per machine, not per session, so it is still there if the machine reconnects under a new session before being relaunched. The notice underneath names the build waiting to be picked up and updates itself the moment this Mac can confirm it.

Current limitations¶

Guest display name is the current connection identity. Two live machines with the same name collide intentionally rather than being guessed apart.

Classic update signing, internet discovery, and host self-update are not implemented. The connected host is the only provider, and the flow is not yet metal-verified.

For developers¶

See connection sequence and network threat model.