Tailscale, built in

MiniControl ships Tailscale’s open-source daemon and installs it as a system service. It’s up before anyone logs in, so a server that restarted after a power cut is reachable again on its own. There’s no Tailscale app and no extra menu bar icon.

Turn it on and off in the panel’s This Mac section. Signing in shows a button and a QR code for your phone.

If the Tailscale app is already installed, MiniControl offers to remove it: two copies on one Mac fight over the network.

How MiniControl uses it

Each server gets two connections: Tailscale first, your home network second. The panel uses whichever answers, so it works the same at home and away. Pairing adds both to ~/.ssh/config, so Terminal and your editor use them too.