Changelog

Adding a second device now works

• You can pair more than one device again. Adding a second phone, tablet or the web app used to offer only the 6-digit code, and a device paired that way could not actually control your PC once another device had been paired by scanning. The Blender panel now shows the QR code whenever pairing is open, so every device you add connects the same way your first one did.
• Devices that cannot scan get a link instead. The web app on the same PC has no camera, so the panel now has a Copy Pairing Link button. Paste that link into the app’s pairing screen and it connects with full end-to-end encryption, exactly as scanning would.
• Every device is encrypted. Extra devices are no longer the weaker option: they get the same protection as the first, rather than falling back to a connection your PC would refuse.

Update in Blender (Get Extensions ▸ refresh), or download the add-on again from your purchase page. Update the phone app too, so it accepts the pairing link.

Pairing is quicker and more reliable

• The pairing code on screen is always the current one. Regenerate now updates it instantly, so scanning works first time.
• Your paired devices are listed in the panel, with a Pair Another Device button for adding a second phone or tablet.
• Pairing recovers on its own if Blender is closed or restarted midway through setting up a device.
• The 6-digit code switches off once you are paired, and comes back for 10 minutes whenever you ask for it, so it is never guessable while you are not using it.
• Blender no longer pauses while the add-on refreshes your code.

Update in Blender (Get Extensions ▸ refresh), or download the add-on again from your purchase page, then restart Blender.

Alerts that reach a closed app, clearer status, frame recovery

• Render alerts now arrive even when the app is closed. If Android shut the app down mid-render, whether you swiped it away or it was closed to free up memory, your phone still gets an alert the moment the render finishes or fails. Phones paired by QR are end to end encrypted, so their alert stays deliberately vague. The details fill in when you open the app.
• One status indicator instead of two. The connection line and the render state have merged into a single colour and icon. If your PC cannot be reached, the app no longer claims to know what it is doing.
• Get your frames back if the app missed them. When a render finished while the app was not running, the preview screens now offer Download from PC. Your render PC turns the finished frames into a video and sends it over, so you are no longer told there is nothing to download while a finished sequence sits on your machine.
• Downloads always serve the newest build. The download link picks up a new release straight away instead of possibly handing out an older cached one.

Install the 1.3.0 APK from your purchase page. This one is a new build, so it is a download rather than an automatic update.

One note for testing alarms: Android’s Force stop button puts an app in a state where the system delivers it nothing at all. That is how Android works, not a fault in the alarm. To test, swipe the app away instead.

Denoising control, faster camera picking, smarter alarms

• Denoising, per render. The app’s Advanced settings gain a Denoising control. Force Cycles denoising on or off for a single run, or leave it on the file’s own setting. No more re-opening the .blend just to flip one checkbox.
• Camera picking no longer hangs on heavy files. Choosing a camera for a queued .blend used to spin forever on big scenes; the app now waits as long as the read genuinely takes, and your PC remembers the answer per file, so the second look is instant.
• Failed renders sound different. A failure alarm now shows why it failed (the actual error from Blender), turns red, and buzzes with its own urgent pattern, so you can tell success from failure without looking.
• Permissions that ask up front. The app requests notification permission on first open, and enabling the wake-up alarm walks you straight to Android’s full-screen-notification setting.

Update the add-on from Preferences ▸ Get Extensions, then restart Blender. App changes arrive automatically.

Pairing and storage hardening

• Your pairing code is no longer always on. It used to stay guessable for as long as Blender was open, even when you weren’t pairing anything. Now it is live only while you are actually pairing: before your first device, or for 10 minutes after you press Pair Another Device in the Blender panel. Each code is also genuinely single-use now.
• Credentials moved into your phone’s secure keystore. The token that controls your render PC and the key that encrypts your traffic are now held in the Android Keystore / iOS Keychain instead of ordinary app storage, and are no longer included in cloud backups.
• Plain-HTTP connections to the internet are refused. The app will only send your pairing token over an encrypted connection.
• Faster Blender panel. The License section was re-checking your key on every redraw, which made the panel feel sluggish. It now checks once and remembers.

Update the add-on to 1.22.3 (Blender offers it automatically if you added the update repository), and install the latest Android app from your purchase page. Existing pairings keep working, so there is nothing to redo.

A sharper-looking app

• The app now looks like Render Control. The phone and web apps use the same typefaces as this site, so headings, labels, and readouts all read in one voice instead of the generic system font. Numbers and live readouts keep their monospaced instrument look.
• A proper welcome screen. The first screen you see now carries the Render Control mark and a cleaner layout, in place of the old placeholder dot.
• Includes the wake-up alarm and the multi-window fix from the releases below.

Download the latest Android app from your purchase page, or get it here. It installs straight over your current version.

A steady view when several Blender windows are open

• One window connects at a time. If you had two or more Blender windows open, each one connected to your phone as the same PC and they took turns describing it, one mid-render and one idle, so the app’s preview and progress blinked out about once a second. Render Control now picks a single window to do the talking; the others quietly stand by and say so in the Render Control panel.
• Automatic hand-off. Close the connected window and another open one picks the job up on its own, within a few seconds. Nothing to click.
• Steadier during long frames. The hand-off keeps working even while a frame is rendering and Blender’s interface is busy.
• In the app: the live preview film no longer resets on a brief connection blip, and if the app ever does see two windows competing it now tells you which fix to apply instead of just flickering.

Update from Preferences ▸ Get Extensions, then restart Blender.

Wake-you-up render alarm

• Full-screen wake-up alarm (Android). Turn it on and Render Control keeps watching your render in the background. The moment it finishes or fails it wakes your phone and takes over the lock screen with a full-screen alarm you dismiss with one tap. It works exactly like a morning alarm: rings even when the phone is locked, dozing, or on silent, so a long overnight render can actually wake you.
• Audible + vibration alarm. The alarm loops your chosen tone (Chime, Bell, Beep or Alarm, set in Settings) and buzzes until you tap Stop, on silent too.
• Smoother, more accurate live timing. Elapsed time and ETA tick smoothly and stay correct regardless of any clock difference between your phone and your render PC.
• Cleaner loading. Stats that are still loading show a gentle shimmer instead of a bare dash.
• Plus reliability and security hardening under the hood.

Smoother connections, lighter monitoring

• Reconnects after a network drop or relay maintenance are now spread out and much gentler, so the connection recovers quickly without hammering the network.
• Hardware monitoring on the render PC is lighter: GPU stats are sampled every 2 seconds instead of twice per second, freeing CPU for your render. CPU and RAM stay at half-second resolution.
• APK and demo-video downloads are faster, resumable, and served from the edge.

Licensing and AMD support

• License keys: your purchase now issues a signed license, shown once on the purchase page and pasted into the add-on preferences. The add-on panel shows license status.
• Licensed auto-updates: add the Render Control repository in Blender with your license as the access token and updates install like any extension.
• AMD and Intel GPU telemetry alongside NVIDIA: utilization, VRAM, temperature, and power where the hardware reports it.

The clean console redesign

• Phone and web apps redesigned in the light “clean console” style with dark device screens for previews and graphs.
• The web app installs as a PWA and works great on iPhone (guide).
• Per-GPU hardware graphs with gauge and history views, power actions for the render PC, and frame download/export.