If you have an old iPhone in a drawer, you already own a wireless remote camera. Install Remote Shutter on the old phone and on the phone you carry, and the old one becomes a camera you can see through and trigger from up to 50 feet away — no Wi-Fi network, no account, and no monthly fee.
What you need
- Your everyday iPhone (or an iPad, Apple Watch, or Apple-silicon Mac) as the remote
- A spare iPhone as the camera
- Remote Shutter installed on both — the devices find each other and connect directly, peer to peer
That last part matters: because the connection is device-to-device, this works in a forest, a garage, or a basement with zero bars and zero Wi-Fi.
Set it up in two minutes
- Install Remote Shutter on both devices. Same app on each — you pick the role when they connect.
- Open the app on both phones. They discover each other automatically over peer-to-peer Wi-Fi or your local network.
- Make the old phone the camera. Choose the camera role on the spare phone and the remote role on yours.
- Position the camera phone and walk away. From the remote you get a live preview of exactly what the camera sees, and you can switch lenses, flip between front and back cameras, toggle the flash, and capture photos or video.
Photos and videos save on the camera phone, so you can AirDrop them to your main phone when you're done.
Things people actually do with this
Backyard wildlife. Set the camera phone near a feeder or trail, then watch the live preview from inside the house and fire the shutter when something shows up. Unlike a motion-triggered trail cam, you frame the shot and choose the moment.
Check on a room. Point the spare phone at the front door, a workbench print job, or a sleeping pet, and glance at the live view from the couch. Everything stays on your devices — nothing is uploaded anywhere.
Impossible angles. Clamp the old phone above a basketball hoop, inside a bookshelf, or at ground level in the garden. Angles you'd never hold a phone at become easy when the phone doesn't need you behind it.
Self-recording. Film your golf swing, deadlift form, or guitar take with the camera across the room and the preview in your hand — no more walking back and forth to check framing.
Tips for longer sessions
- Power the camera phone. The live preview uses more battery than the remote side; a small power bank keeps an old phone shooting all afternoon.
- Mount it. Any cheap phone tripod or clamp works — see the field kit we shoot with for what we use.
- Old batteries are fine. A phone with 70% battery health that dies in an hour on its own runs indefinitely on a charger.
Remote Shutter is free to download, and the basics — live preview, remote photo capture — work without paying anything. One-time upgrades unlock video recording and the full feature set. There's no subscription.