Modder's iPhone app controls GTA 5's in-game phone

GTA 5 mod

Not all mods spring from a collective need or community requests. Sometimes they're just the result of a modder having an idea and wondering "Hey, can I do that?"

Reddit user planetleak posted a video of an iPhone app he's been working on. It allows him to control the virtual phone of his Grand Theft Auto 5 character using his real phone. His app recreates the GTA 5 phone interface (using xcode), and he added buttons and gesture controls. By pressing buttons on his app, it sends a URL to his Arduino webserver, which then runs a keybinding macro. Thus he can access the in-game phone's features, scroll through its inbox, make calls to contacts, and even take in-game photos. Have a look at some video of the app in action.

Obviously, pulling out your personal phone and using it to control Trevor's phone is hardly practical. It's easier to simply use your keyboard or controller. Still, it's really neat watching the modder call Trevor a cab. (Which Trevor, being Trevor, then destroys.) There's no word yet whether planetleak will share the app or source code with others, though I'd probably buy it just for novelty's sake.

Christopher Livingston
Staff Writer

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.