ControlAir For Mac

ControlAir is a modern OS X application that makes it as simple as possible for you to remotely control media applications on your Mac via finger motion gestures.

By now, you are probably thinking that, as far as you know, Macs don’t have touch screens and you are right to think so. Simply put, ControlAir uses your Mac’s iSight webcam as a motion controller and detects certain finger motion gestures, which are then translated into actual actions.

In order to take advantage of what ControlAir has to offer, you must first undergo a calibration process by tilting your Mac’s screen until your head is positioned within the dedicated red circle. This process takes place in the Setup dialog and ends with a suggestion towards starting a tutorial that will help you learn the basic of the app’s touch-free control gestures.

Once this is taken care of, by simply raising your finger in front of your Mac’s iSight, you will now be able to control the volume level, skip songs or videos, as well as pause and play media content while using apps like iTunes, QuickTime Player, Rdio, Spotify, VLC, VOX, and Gear for Google Play and YouTube.

In spite of the fact that the development team behind ControlAir states that you should face your Mac’s camera from a distance of 1 to 5 feet (or 0.3 to 1.5 meters for those who use the metric system), we have found the application to be quite responsive even after moving away from the Mac at more than double the distance.

What’s more, another worth-mentioning and quite cool feature is the fact that if you quickly raise your finger to your lips, in what can be considered a “shush” gesture, this motion will mute your Mac, and, by repeating it, the sound will be enabled once again.

We must admit that we have found the ControlAir app to be very entertaining and we have very much enjoyed working with it. The only trick to keep in mind here is that your fingers must be in the exact detection area of your Mac’s camera, more specifically,  within the displayed circle found in the Setup menu.

One thing that we hope the development team will implement in future installments of the app is a feedback interface that would make it possible for you to view in real time where you should place your finger so that it meets your iSight’s view field.

Also, because the app only works if at least one of the supported apps is enabled, it would be nice if ControlAir would allow you to launch any of those apps using a special interface displayed when you either raise your finger or perform another gesture.

One thing is quite clear though, once you start using ControlAir you will never look at your Mac’s iSight camera in the same way as before. Probably the best thing about it? Clearly, the fact that it uses your Mac’s existing hardware and technology.

Taking all things into consideration, ControlAir is one of the most interesting applications we have tested lately and it shows a fair amount of potential for future gesture control development.