# Using the live view

> Controls, keyboard, touch, clipboard and reconnecting.

The live view streams the remote Chrome with WebRTC. Your keyboard, mouse, touch and clipboard input is sent in order, and is never silently dropped.

## One place at a time

A browser can be controlled from one tab or device at a time. Opening it elsewhere shows “open in another tab” with Use here to take over.

## Touch screens

- Tap to click; swipe with one or two fingers to scroll.
- Tap a text field, a search box or the address bar and the on-screen keyboard opens by itself, with the field’s own layout (email, numbers, web address), also for a field the page opens a moment after your tap; tapping outside any field closes it again. It stays closed while you type on a hardware keyboard.
- Capitals arrive as you type them, with Shift or with Caps Lock on a hardware keyboard.
- The keyboard button in the toolbar shows or hides the on-screen keyboard yourself. A keyboard opened with it stays open wherever you tap, for pages that take typing outside a text field.
- Maximize hides the toolbar and gives the whole screen to the page; a small control in the corner keeps the keyboard and the way back a tap away. The maximized view stays within your browser (Add to Home Screen hides its address bar), because iPhone and iPad allow no typing in a fullscreen page.
- If the picture stops responding, More → Reconnect live view starts the connection again without leaving the page. Coming back to a tab that was in the background reconnects by itself.

## Typing other languages

Input methods (such as Chinese or Japanese) work: the composed text is inserted into the page. Send keys in the toolbar sends combinations like Ctrl+Alt+Del that your own computer would catch.

Chrome in your browser is in English. To have websites show another language, add it in Chrome’s own settings (chrome://settings/languages); the choice is kept with the browser.

## Clipboard

Copying in the remote browser fills your clipboard where your browser allows it. Use Paste from your clipboard to send text the other way.

## Reconnecting

If the connection drops, the view tries up to three times and shows the attempt number. If it still cannot connect, it shows a connection reference and a Retry button. Running means the machine is running; a remote desktop connection can still fail. If input delivery is interrupted, input pauses until you reconnect; earlier clicks and keystrokes are not replayed, so nothing is typed twice.

## Picture quality

The live view adapts to your connection without ever blurring the page: every step shows the browser at full resolution. It measures the connection every two seconds: round trip, lost packets, frames arriving and how much data gets through. On a good connection it runs at 30 frames per second. Above about 180 ms of round trip it sends a lighter picture at the same 30 frames per second; a long round trip alone never lowers the frame rate. When the connection cannot keep up (lost packets, frames not arriving, or delay rising well above its usual level), it goes straight to the step whose data rate fits what actually gets through: 30 frames per second with less data, then 15 and 10, still at full resolution so text stays readable. It returns once the connection has been steady, and undoes a step up within seconds if the connection cannot carry it.

At every step the page keeps the same size and layout in your window; a lower one only looks softer and sends less data. The remote page always follows the size of your window, and the connection details in the toolbar show the round trip and the picture being sent.

## Data use

The picture is H.264 video. Chrome, Edge and Safari play it; Firefox needs its OpenH264 plugin, which it normally installs by itself. Data depends on what changes on screen: the picture sends only what changes, at most about 1.35 GB per hour at full while video or animations fill the screen, about 0.45 GB per hour reading and scrolling text in our tests, and very little on a still page. The lower steps send at most about 0.8, 0.55 and 0.35 GB per hour. Data sent from the browser is charged per GB.

Source: https://nevazu.com/docs/live-view