tradie-invoices

📱 Phone setup — remote debugging over Tailscale

This is the phone-side half. Do these steps on the Motorola Edge 50 Neo. You can read this guide right on the phone while you do it. The Mac side is already done by Claude.

Why: so the Mac can see your phone’s screen (live mirror) and every log line the invoicing app prints — over an encrypted Tailscale tunnel — whether you’re on home WiFi or out on LTE. Useful for debugging the app while it runs in the cradle on the drive to work.

Time: ~3 minutes. You do this once; after that it just works.

Step 1 — Install Tailscale

  1. Open the Play Store.
  2. Search Tailscale.
  3. Install it (publisher: Tailscale Inc.).

Step 2 — Sign in to the SAME account as the Mac

  1. Open Tailscale.
  2. Tap Sign in (or Get started).
  3. Sign in with the exact same account the Mac uses — whatever you signed into on the Mac (Google / Microsoft / GitHub / email). ⚠️ Different account = the two devices can’t see each other. Same account is the whole point.

Step 3 — Turn the VPN ON

  1. Tap the big Connect toggle so it goes green / on.
  2. Android will pop up “Connection request — Tailscale wants to set up a VPN connection.” Tap OK / Allow.
  3. You’ll see a small key icon 🔑 in the status bar — that means the tunnel is up.
  4. Leave Tailscale connected. (It sits quietly in the background; barely uses battery when idle.)

Step 4 — Grab the phone’s Tailscale IP — send this to Claude/Steven’s Mac

  1. In the Tailscale app, your device is listed at the top (its name, e.g. moto-edge-50-neo).
  2. Under it you’ll see an IP that starts with 100. — e.g. 100.x.y.z. That’s the phone’s Tailscale IP.
  3. Send that 100.x.y.z address back so the Mac side can wire up. (Tap it to copy.)

Step 5 — Confirm Wireless Debugging is ON (stays on)

You’ve used this before for the APK installs, so it’s probably already set.

  1. Settings → System → Developer options (if Developer options is hidden: Settings → About phone → tap Build number 7 times).
  2. Scroll to Wireless debugging → make sure it’s ON.
  3. Tap into Wireless debugging and note the IP address & Port shown at the top — it looks like 192.168.x.x:42385 (the port changes each boot). Over Tailscale we use the phone’s 100. address instead, but having Wireless debugging on is what lets adb connect at all.
  4. If the Mac has never paired with this phone before, you may need Pair device with pairing code once (tap it → it shows a 6-digit code + a …:port address → send both to the Mac so it can run adb pair). After the first pair, plain adb connect works.

Note on ports: modern Android Wireless Debugging uses a random port that changes every reboot (e.g. 42385, 44143…). The connect port is shown at the top of the Wireless debugging screen. If the Mac can’t connect after a reboot, just re-open that screen and send the new …:port over.

Daily use (after first-time setup)

  1. Put the phone in the 12V cradle and plug it in — screen mirroring + Tailscale + logcat all drain battery noticeably. Keep it on power.
  2. Make sure Tailscale is connected (🔑 in the status bar).
  3. Open the invoicing app.
  4. Tell the Mac to run ./scripts/monitor-phone.sh — the screen mirror window + log stream come up.

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