Paired devices

An owner app on another device, such as your phone, can reach your node and act for you once you pair it. Your node is ready for that today; the apps are still to come.

The owner apps themselves, such as a mobile app or a remote mode of the desktop app, are not there yet, so there is nothing to pair with today. What's next

How pairing works

An owner app makes a key of its own, on its device. You give it a pairing code from your node. The app uses the code once to introduce its key, and from then on your node knows the device by that key and lets it call your node as you. The code also says where to find your node: at its domain name for a core node, or, for a periphery node, through the peers it is connected to, which relay for it. Nothing in between can read or change what the app sends. The front door at dassiepay.net, a node's default relay, passes on Open Payments only, never an owner app.

Only you, on the node's own machine, can start a pairing. A wallet session opened from somewhere else cannot turn itself into a lasting device, and a paired device cannot pair another.

Why it works this way: pairing only from the node's own machine.

Get a pairing code

There are two ways, both on the node's own machine.

In the wallet

This works when your browser reaches the node on its own machine, as the desktop app's window does.

1. Open Settings, and find the Paired devices card.
2. Select Pair a device.
3. Scan the QR code in the app, or select Copy code and paste it there. The card says until when it works.

In a wallet opened from another machine, such as your laptop's browser on your server's wallet, the card shows your node's refusal instead, which points you to dassie pair.

On a server

Run this on the server:

$dassie pair
dassie-pair:…?v=1&secret=…

It prints the code, a dassie-pair: link, for you to enter in the app. Your user must be in the group dassie-users, as the installer sets up, or use sudo. See The dassie command.

Either way

• A code works once, for five minutes.
• A new code replaces the old one. New code in the wallet, or dassie pair again, makes one.
• A restart of your node forgets a code that was not used.
• Your node keeps up to 32 devices. With a full list, it refuses a new one rather than dropping one you paired: revoke one first.

Remove a device

The Paired devices card lists each device by the name its app gave, with when you paired it and when your node last saw it.

1. Find the device, and select Revoke.
2. Confirm with Revoke it.

The app loses access at once: your node closes its connections. To use it again, pair it again. Revoke a device you lost, or no longer use.

Building an owner app? See Owner apps, and paired devices in the spec.