Control My Laptop

A live website where strangers change my laptop's brightness and volume in real time.

Try it live ↗ Watch the film · 1:14

I have a bad habit of working late, so I built a website where anyone can annoy me off my laptop: visitors press keys that change my real laptop's brightness and volume. I designed and built it in two weeks for NYU ITP's Live Web class. When trolls took over its chat, I redesigned the chat while people were still on the site.

Role

Design and code

Timeline

2 weeks, spring 2026

Team

Solo

Tools

Claude, Gemini, Figma

Problem

A button on a website that changes someone's real laptop sounds fake. People doubt it before they press anything.

Solution

Make the website look like a laptop screen, so the press and the result happen in the same place.

01 · The desktop

I made the website look like a desktop, so strangers would believe it's my real laptop

The idea came from Nolen Royalty's Global Capslock Key, which lets strangers toggle one key on his keyboard. Claude built my first version from a prompt. Every button worked, but it looked like every other AI-generated site. So I gave Claude a lo-fi wireframe, real macOS assets and the content for each window, and directed it into a desktop that mimics my own Mac screen.

Then I added the overlay a Mac shows when you press a brightness key, and a black layer that really dims the page. You watch the laptop respond.

Close-up of the site: the macOS brightness overlay over the page, next to the group chat and the function keys window
Brightness upThe same overlay as on a Mac.
The same view with brightness turned down: the whole page is darkened and the overlay shows two bars
Brightness downThe page darkens for everyone watching.

02 · Testing

I watched 10 friends try it, and the sliders fought each other

When two people dragged the same slider, it jumped back and forth between them. A key press is one step with nothing shared to fight over, so I replaced the sliders with function keys. The same test showed that my portfolio in the main window confused new visitors, so that window now explains the site in one paragraph.

First draft: a macOS-style desktop with Summer's portfolio in a browser window and brightness and volume sliders in a control panel
BeforeSliders, and my portfolio in the main window.
Final design: a short explanation of the site in the main window, a group chat, and a window of F1, F2, F10, F11 and F12 keys
AfterFunction keys, a short explanation, and a chat.

Behind each key press

Browsera visitor presses F1 Serverbatches presses every 200 ms, caps each change at 10% Agent on my laptopPython Brightness and volumeeveryone sees the change

A crowd pressing at once moves the laptop in steps instead of breaking it.

03 · The chat

I added a group chat, and at hour 12 trolls took it over

With keys alone, nobody knew if anyone else was there, so I added an iMessage-style group chat. For 12 hours it worked as I hoped. Then my post on X brought a wave of anonymous visitors, and with about 30 people in the chat, trolls started spamming offensive messages.

I had designed for curious, playful people and left an open text box with no moderation. I fixed it while the site was live:

  1. 1

    A Gemini filter

    Screened every message. Trolls found ways past it.

  2. 2

    New rules, live

    Every rule I added, they worked around. I couldn't out-prompt them.

  3. 3

    Emojis only

    I swapped the text box for a Notes window of emojis I chose. Nothing left to filter.

Group chat window titled Summer and 6 viewers, with messages like Wait is this real?, GOTO BED SUMMERRRR and kinda feel bad messing with her lmao but its so fun
BeforeAnyone could type anything.
Notes window titled spread love! with a row of placed emojis above a grid of emojis to pick from
AfterPeople could react, but no longer talk.

Where it stands

summerlaptop.me is still live, and the chat is back on

Once the wave from X moved on, I turned the chat back on. Emoji mode is one switch away if trolls come back.

What I learned

Test with strangers, not just friends. My friends used the chat nicely because they know me; the worst cases only appeared with anonymous visitors.

Next time

Build moderation into the first version instead of adding it during a live crisis.

Next project Weave →