Idasen Desk Controller – Mac app

This is a Mac Status Bar application for controlling your IKEA IDÅSEN (Linak) Desk

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Download latest release

Why?

The best way I've found to get myself to use my sit/stand desk more; is to remove as much friction around moving it as possible.

The Linak 'Desk Control' mobile app let's you set favourite positions — but then you need to open the app, and press and hold the up/down arrow until it get's into position. Having to hold the button the whole time was just a bit annoying for me; and I found myself changing height positions less.

I found a couple of different solutions across Github; but there were no truly Native Mac apps... until now.

I'm already on my Mac when sitting/standing at my desk — so why can't I quickly control the desk from here; without needing to open Linak's Desk Control Mobile app or having to use physical controller?

Features

• Easy access from the Mac Status Bar
• View current height
• Save sit/stand height positions
• Move up/down
• Move to sit/stand position without having to hold down the button
• Automatic launch on startup (configurable in preferences)
• Supports AppleScript to interact with it (e.g. via an Alfred App workflow)

Getting started

• Download the 'Desk Controller' App, and move it to your 'Applications' folder
• Double-click to open it
• Now it will show up in your Status Bar

Other info:

• To access the preferences either right-click on the Status bar icon and click Preferences – or after clicking on the icon, click on the settings icon in the bottom right
• To quit the application entirely; right-click on the Status bar icon and click Quit

Troubleshooting

• Make sure no other phones / computers currently have one of the 'Desk Control' apps open and connected to your desk, if you do, simply quit that app, and this Desk Controller app should work
• Make sure your Idasen Desk still has the word "Desk" in the name of the device — e.g if you changed its name via Linak's Desk Control mobile app
• If it's still not finding your desk; try resetting your desk. To do this:
  1. Lower your desk as low as it goes
  2. Now once more hold down the physical controller to lower it even more, after a second or 2 it should jump down and up
  3. Now press and hold the 'bluetooth' button on the front of the physical controller, for a few seconds – until the blue light starts blinking

Interacting with AppleScript

If you want to interact with your Desk via AppleScript; you can talk directly through the 'Desk Controller' mac app.

This is great for setting up an Alfred App workflow

Commands:

move "to-sit": Will move to the saved 'Sitting position'

move "to-stand": Will move to the saved 'Standing position'

move "up": Will move the desk up a tiny bit

move "down": Will move the desk down a tiny bit

move to "120cm": Will move the desk to a height of 120cm

move to "55in": Will move the desk to a height of 55 inches

move to "80": Will move the desk to a height of either 80cm or 80in depending on your preferences

So you may have an AppleScript script that looks like this:

tell application "Desk Controller"
    move "to-sit"
end tell