HarmonyOS cluster control is the same kind of setup as Android cluster control and Apple cluster control, with the target changed to HarmonyOS Next: one computer manages them together, dispatches in bulk, and collects results in bulk. Below is the order for master-control sync, text input, and OCR.
Four steps to a picture, and pick the mirroring scene first
Pull the picture up in the HarmonyOS central control first. HarmonyOS Next mirroring is opened from the central control. Step one: double-click 新中控.exe in the install directory, wait for it to finish starting, and log in. Before login, ignore mirroring. Mirroring depends on the central control service. Step two: confirm the device is already in the list and the service status shows Yes. A device with automation off can connect, and the picture will not come up. Step three: click group mirroring in the top toolbar and choose the new interface in the dialog. The classic interface is the old one. New features are basically all in the new interface. Step four: select the devices, click start mirroring, and wait for the thumbnails to show a picture. The first time in, a beginner guide appears. Pick the light or dark theme.
After you enter mirroring, confirm the scene under mirroring settings in system settings. That setting decides which channel taps and swipes leave on:
| Scene | Gesture path | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| USB + automation service | Proxy | Default. Ordinary actions use this |
| USB + Bluetooth HID | Bluetooth HID | An ESP32 board is connected and gestures leave from the board |
| Custom | Choose by hand | You need to set the gesture path and the board connection separately |
When the scene is wrong, the usual symptom is a normal picture and taps that do nothing. “Picture is there, taps do nothing” starts by coming back here and looking at mirroring settings.
Master control, sync, and text input
In the thumbnail grid each device is one thumbnail. To operate a phone directly from the computer, set it as master control first: right-click the thumbnail and choose set as master control.
After you turn on sync in the sidebar, taps and swipes on the master-control picture sync to the selected devices. Sync needs both of these at once: the target devices are selected, and control, mouse, and keyboard above the master-control title bar are on as needed. Control is the master sync switch. Mouse covers mouse actions. Keyboard covers keyboard input. With only the master switch on and the mouse off, swipes do not move. The master-control form is changed under More in the sidebar. A floating window fits watching while you work. A separate window fits two screens. Page embed sits on the left or the right. Sync random delay can be changed too. During a bulk sync, every device would do the same action in the same millisecond. This parameter staggers the action time across devices.
Text input has two modes, chosen in system settings. The system default is proxy input, which can type Chinese, long text, and emoji. Follow HID uses Bluetooth keyboard key codes. English and shortcuts are fine. Chinese is painful, so Chinese stays on proxy. There is an input box above the master-control area. You can send text straight to the master-control device, which is handy for a one-off comment or a line of copy. Image and video transfer live in the sidebar workbench, and also in the thumbnail right-click menu. Image transfer supports picking a folder per device for a batch upload, which saves work on bulk publishing.
Central control 3.1.0 and above include PPOCR-v6. HarmonyOS OCR is on the OCR page in system settings. After you pick the engine you can check “release resources after recognition,” then right-click a thumbnail and choose recognize screen text. After a bulk publish or a bulk action finishes, use it to read the text on screen and confirm the content was filled in, which is more than looking only at the success status the script returned. Scripted replies are for customer service: select several devices, right-click into multi-device scripts, and send different replies to several phones at once. All of that is done in the interface. You do not have to write a HarmonyOS automation script first.
How to check a stuttering picture
When the picture stutters, follow the path. Look at the network first: bandwidth, packet loss, and wireless interference. Prefer wired inside the LAN. On wireless, look at how many devices the router is carrying. Then look at the device: while it is under a heavy load, encoding and streaming slow down and the picture stutters with them. Last, look at the computer: pulling dozens of streams at once uses the GPU and the CPU. “Save bandwidth when switching groups” in the sidebar stops the stream for the group you switched away from. If a thumbnail is only there so you can see status, lower the thumbnail resolution. You do not have to pull the stream at the main-screen resolution.
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