Buy it once. It stays bought.
Dusty Desk is sold the old way: you pay once, the software is yours, and it keeps working forever. The paid upgrades carry twelve months of updates with them, and renewing those updates is optional — if you never renew, nothing stops working. There is no account, no monthly bill, and nothing in the app that checks whether you are still paying.
There is no buy button on this page, and that is deliberate.
The prices below are real decisions, not placeholders — and the same numbers are written into the Terms and the Refund Policy. But a price is not a product you can buy. Three specific things stand between this page and a working checkout, and none of them is the kind of thing a "Buy now" button should paper over:
- There is nothing to sell yet. No signed, notarized build of the Mac app exists — the project has no Apple Developer ID certificate, so every copy that can be built today is ad-hoc signed and would be blocked on any Mac but the one that built it. The whole story is on the download page, and it blocks revenue outright.
- No store exists. The merchant of record has been chosen (see below) but no store, no product listing and no checkout has been set up with them. Nothing on this site can take a payment, and nothing on this site asks you for an email address, a card, or anything else.
- The licence system these prices describe has not been built. The tiers, the signed licence file and the trial below are a specified design, not shipped code. The app as it stands today has a much simpler arrangement: a list of keys kept on the owner's own Mac, with no notion of a tier and no cryptographic signature. Everything on this page that describes how licensing will work is labelled as such.
When there is a real file and a real store, this page will grow a real button. Until then it stays a price list.
One app, two feature levels, and one licence that lets you use it at work.
Every feature listed here exists in the software today — this is the shipped feature set, not a roadmap. What does not exist yet is the paid packaging around it.
- ›Your phone is the trackpad. One finger moves the pointer, tap is a left click, press-and-hold grips so you can drag, two fingers scroll or right-click, pinch zooms, three fingers hit Mission Control. A drag-lock button latches a drag when your thumb needs a rest.
- ›And the keyboard. A keys bar rides above the iOS keyboard — type and send to the Mac, arrow keys, ⌘ combos — plus dictation using your phone browser's own speech engine.
- ›Point mode and Table mode. Wave the phone like a laser pointer, or lay it face-up on the desk and slide it around like an actual mouse — the front camera watches the ceiling to work out which way you moved.
- ›Ghost view. A secret knock fades in a translucent still of your Mac's screen behind the trackpad, so you can see what you're clicking. These are throttled stills — a couple of frames a second, not video.
- ›Your own pairing key. Your Mac generates it and puts it in the link. Rotate it and every link you ever sent dies instantly.
- ›Everything in Ratón, plus:
- ›The live screen, not stills. A real screen stream you can watch and work in — touch or mouse modes, edge-pan, zoom, and a gesture ring that fires real macOS gestures at the cursor.
- ›Clipboard both ways, shortcuts, and alerts. Copy on the Mac and paste on the phone or the reverse; your Mac's notifications arrive on your phone with a chime.
- ›Text cleanup on your own hardware. Dictation and grammar polish run against a local model on your Mac. No paid API, no text leaving the machine.
- ›Quick Share. Hand someone a throwaway link and let them look through your screen. They see nothing until you admit them, control is yours to hand over or take back, and one tap revokes the link.
- ›Remote help. Send a link to someone else's Mac — they run two lines in Terminal, their machine dials out to yours, and you can see and drive it. Nothing installs, and the credential burns when the session ends.
- ›Several computers in one dashboard, each with an append-only session ledger recording who connected, for how long, and what they were allowed to do.
- ›Identical software to Ratón Vista. Nothing is switched off in the cheaper tiers and nothing extra is switched on here. There is no feature behind this price.
- ›What you are buying is the right to use it at work — in a business, on client machines, in a support desk, or anywhere the tool is part of how you earn money.
- ›Why it costs more anyway. A tool that earns its keep is worth more than the same tool used on your own couch, and a solo developer with no subscription income needs the commercial buyers to carry more of the load. That is the whole argument; there is no invented feature list propping it up.
The renewal buys new versions. It can't switch anything off.
This is the part that usually hides in the small print, so here it is in the large print instead.
| Tier | Updates included | Optional renewal |
|---|---|---|
| Ratón — $29 | No updates clock | None |
| Ratón Vista — $89 | 12 months from purchase | $39 / year |
| Vista Pro — $199 | 12 months from purchase | $89 / year |
What lapsing actually does: nothing, to the copy you already have. The software you paid for keeps running exactly as it did, indefinitely — no countdown, no nag screen, no degraded mode, no read-only fallback, no phoning home to check. What lapses is your claim on future builds: a version released after your updates date simply won't run under your licence, and the one you have carries on.
Renewing moves that line forward. Not renewing costs you nothing you already had.
There is no update channel yet. Nothing in the app checks for a new version — which is exactly why nothing pings anybody when you launch it, and also why a renewal is a promise rather than a product right now. A way to actually deliver updates has to exist before an updates renewal can honestly be sold.
The pricing model and the privacy promise are the same decision.
Plenty of good software is sold by the month, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is just the wrong shape for this product, for four specific reasons.
There is no server to keep alive
Dusty Desk has no backend. Your Mac is the server. Charging rent would mean building one just to ask "is this person still paying?" — and then keeping it running for the life of every licence ever sold.
It keeps "never phones home" literally true
A recurring charge needs a periodic check. A one-time licence needs none. The licence carries its own dates inside it, so there is nothing to check and nobody to check with.
If the developer vanishes, your app doesn't
This is one person's product. A subscription is a promise that a licence server will answer for years. A file verified on your own Mac makes no such promise, and needs none.
Nothing to cancel
No dunning emails, no failed-card recovery, no proration, no cancellation flow you have to hunt for. You bought a thing; you have the thing.
A file on your Mac, checked without the internet.
Described here in advance because it is the mechanism that makes every promise above keepable — and because you should be able to judge it before you pay for it.
What the file is
Your licence is a small signed file. It carries your name, the tier you bought, whether the grant is personal or commercial, the date it was issued, the date your updates run through, and the order reference from the shop.
The app carries the matching public key and checks the signature on its own, on your machine. Nothing is sent anywhere — not on first run, not at launch, not ever. Take the Mac off the network permanently and the licence still checks out.
Why it can't expire
The verifier has exactly one rule about the updates date, and it is a rule about builds, not about time: a build released after your date won't run under your licence; a build released on or before it runs forever.
So the copy you have can't stop working, because the check has nothing to do with what day it is. There is no expiry field, no grace period and no kill switch — not as a policy, but because there is no code that could do it.
None of the above is shipping code. Today the app keeps a plain list of keys on the owner's own Mac — no tiers, no signature, no updates date. The design on this page is specified and decided, and it is what a paid release would have to ship with; it is not what you would find if you opened the app this afternoon.
Signing makes a licence impossible to forge without the private key, which is what stops someone writing a key generator. It does not stop a determined person from patching the check out of a copy on their own machine. That is true of every offline licence scheme ever shipped, and it is the right trade here: the alternative is a server, and a server costs the promise that makes this app worth buying.
14 days, every feature, no credit card.
Not a crippled demo and not a card-on-file trial that quietly starts charging. You install it, you use all of it, and after fourteen days it asks for a licence.
How it works
- ›14 days from first run.
- ›Every feature, including the screen upgrade. There is nothing to discover only after paying.
- ›No credit card, no email, no account. Nothing to cancel, because nothing was started.
- ›Nothing leaves your Mac. The clock is a date stamp written locally on first run — no server is told that a trial began.
An honest word about the lock
A local trial is an honest lock, not a cryptographic one. The date stamp sits on your own machine, and someone determined to find it, clear it and start over can.
The only way to prevent that is a server that remembers who has already tried — which is precisely the thing this product refuses to build. So the leak is accepted, deliberately, and stated here rather than hidden. No hidden files, no keychain tricks, no clock-rollback detection: that kind of theatre is defeated just as easily and makes an app look untrustworthy to exactly the person this one is built for.
There is no trial mechanism in the app today — no first-run stamp, no fourteen-day check, nothing. It is a decided design that arrives with the paid release.
Which one you need, in plain language.
Personal — $29 or $89
You, on your own computers, for your own life. Reaching your home Mac from the couch or from a hotel, helping a family member with their laptop, running your own long jobs while you're out.
Freelancers and hobbyists blur this line constantly, and no software can tell the difference. The test is simple and self-applied: if the tool is part of how you make money, it's commercial.
Commercial — $199
Using it at a company, on client machines, in an IT or support role, on a machine your employer owns, or as part of a service you charge for.
This is a licence grant, not a feature gate. Nothing detects it and nothing will be built to detect it — no phoning home, no audit, no seat counting. It works on the honour system, like most independent developer tools, and it is spelled out in the Terms so that a business that wants to be straight has a straight answer.
Two contracts, one checkout — and you're entitled to know which is which.
The software licence is granted by Marcos Mercado, an individual trading as Dusty Desk. There is no company behind that name — no LLC, no corporation — and this page will not pretend otherwise.
Marcos Mercado, trading as Dusty DeskEl Espacio, 105 Calle De La Cruz
San Juan, Puerto Rico
marcos@marcossmercado.com
The sale itself would be handled by Lemon Squeezy, acting as the merchant of record — meaning they, not Marcos Mercado, are the seller of record for the transaction. Your contract for the purchase is with them: they take the payment, handle the card, charge and remit VAT or sales tax in your country, and issue your invoice. Your contract for the software — the licence itself — is with Marcos Mercado. Two contracts, two counterparties, one checkout.
The practical reason is unglamorous: a one-person business in Puerto Rico selling software to consumers worldwide would otherwise have to register for, collect and file EU VAT, UK VAT and a growing list of US state sales taxes. A merchant of record takes that on. Their fee is the price of doing that properly instead of badly.
Refunds: 14 days, no questions asked
Within fourteen days of your purchase you can ask for your money back and get it, without explaining yourself. Because the merchant of record took the payment, they process the refund — so the request goes to them, and the full detail lives on the Refund Policy page. There is no recurring charge behind any of this to argue about later.
Questions about any of this before there is a store: marcos@marcossmercado.com. That is a mailbox, not a waiting list — nothing on this site collects your address.
Downloaded from this site. Never from the Mac App Store.
When there is a build to sell, it will be a notarized download straight from dustydesk.io — signed with an Apple Developer ID and stamped by Apple's notary service, so your Mac can check it came from a known developer and hasn't been tampered with.
It will never be on the Mac App Store, and that is permanent rather than pending. Every app on the Mac App Store must run inside Apple's App Sandbox, and the sandbox forbids exactly the thing this app exists to do: send mouse and keyboard input into other applications. There is no version of Dusty Desk that is both sandboxed and functional. Any iPhone companion app would be a separate thing on a separate store.
The download page carries the current build status, what your Mac needs, and what macOS will ask you on first launch.
Our focus is supercharging your remote productivity.
Dusty Desk keeps your own computer reachable and working while you're away from it. It's a local-first tool for you and the people you invite — not a place your data lives. You hold the key; you decide who gets in; you can pull the plug any time.