Remote Control
Floating viewer tips
The xCloudPhone viewer opens as a floating window on top of the dashboard, so you can keep using the dashboard while controlling a cloud phone in the same browser tab.
4 min read
The xCloudPhone viewer doesn't take over the whole page — it opens as a floating overlay on top of your dashboard. That means you can control a cloud phone and still browse the device list, check your balance, or read the docs in the same browser tab.
Open the viewer from a device card
Open My Devices (app.xcloudphone.com/dashboard/devices). Each device shows up as a card with 5 action buttons at the bottom, left to right:
- Eye icon — opens the viewer. Tooltip: Control device. Only clickable when the device is Online. When offline, the button is dimmed and the tooltip changes to "Device offline cannot be viewed".
- Pencil icon — Edit the session name, note, group, or proxy.
- Clock icon — Extend the rental. If the package doesn't allow extending or you've already hit its maximum hours, you'll get a toast error.
- Power icon — Reboot the device remotely.
- Share icon — Share the session: opens a menu with Share Link and Shared Sessions. The button gets a green outline when an active share exists.
Clicking the body of the card only selects / deselects that card (for bulk actions). To open the viewer you have to click the Eye icon specifically.
Move the viewer window
On desktop, the viewer has a header bar you can drag with the mouse to reposition the window. The system clamps the viewer inside the viewport — when you resize the browser or rotate the screen, the viewer is pulled back to a valid position so it never goes off-screen.
When you close the viewer with the X button, the cloud phone's video stream keeps decoding in the background. Reopening the same device brings the frame back instantly, with no re-handshake.
Browsers that support Picture-in-Picture can pop the viewer video into a standalone PiP window from the control panel, handy when you need to keep an eye on the device while doing something else.
Open several viewers at once
You can run multiple cloud phones side by side, each in its own viewer window.
Open My Devices.
Click the Eye icon on the first device card — its viewer appears.
The viewer stays on screen; the dashboard is still visible underneath. Click the Eye icon on a second device card to open a second viewer.
Repeat for as many devices as you need.
How many viewers you can run depends on your computer and your network. Once four or five are open, watch the CPU fan and frame stutter — that's the signal to scale back.
Sync actions across devices
When you need to do the same thing on many devices (mass login, scrolling, running a campaign…), you don't have to open them one by one. Use Sync Control — you act on a primary device and the rest follow. See the Sync Control section for details.
Two-monitor layout
With two monitors, this layout works well:
- Monitor 1 — dashboard, notes, reference docs, Files Manager.
- Monitor 2 — viewer dedicated to the cloud phone.
You can keep an eye on device status and remaining rental time while you work on the phone without flipping tabs.
Keep your connection steady
A few habits keep the viewer happy:
- Don't close the browser tab that holds the viewer — the viewer disconnects. The cloud phone keeps running for the rental period, but you have to reopen the viewer.
- Avoid letting your computer sleep while a viewer is in use — connections drop when the OS suspends.
- Watch the time-remaining badge on each card. The badge turns amber when less than 3 days remain and red when less than 1 day remains — that's your cue to click the Clock icon and extend.
Closing the whole browser disconnects every viewer. The cloud phones keep running on their rental contract, but any work-in-progress on your side ends there.
Fix offline or stuck-on-connecting devices
Sometimes a card shows Offline, or the viewer opens but its "Connecting" overlay spins forever without producing a picture. The fastest fix lives right on the device card in My Devices:
Find the affected device card in the list.
Click the Power icon on the card — it sits between the Clock icon and the Share icon; its tooltip is Reboot.
A confirmation modal appears with the note "Restart device remotely. Use when experiencing connection issues or device offline. If the problem persists, please contact admin." Click Confirm.
After confirming, a Reboot Results modal shows the outcome (Success / Invalid session / Failed).
Wait 1–2 minutes for the reboot. Once the badge flips back to Online, click the Eye icon again to open the viewer.
To reboot several devices at once, tick multiple cards → open the Actions menu → choose Reboot. The system fires reboots in parallel and reports the per-device result inside the same modal.
If a reboot doesn't bring the device back online within 5 minutes, that's a deeper issue — head to Troubleshoot viewer connection to keep diagnosing, or contact support and include the Session ID (use the copy button next to the session name on the card).