AnchorGrid vs Microsoft Teams for iOS remote support

Every Intune shop has the same conversation eventually. Someone asks about iOS remote support, and someone else says: we already have Teams. It’s in the tenant. It’s free. It passes security review. Just use Teams.

They’re right. I’ve used Teams for exactly this. I’ll use it again if I have to. But nobody who says “just use Teams” has counted the steps.

Count the steps

A user calls. They can’t find the setting. They can’t describe what’s on the screen, which is why they called: if they could describe it, they’d have found it.

The Teams path:

1. You start a meeting or send a link.
2. They find the link. In email, or Teams, or wherever you sent it.
3. It opens in the browser. You tell them to open it in the app instead.
4. They join.
5. They allow microphone access.
6. You say: tap the three dots at the bottom.
7. You say: now tap Share.
8. You say: now tap Start Broadcast. No, not that one. The one below it.
9. iOS throws up the ReplayKit permission sheet. You explain that too.
10. They tap Start. Three-second countdown.
11. They’re now looking at the Teams UI, not the app they had the problem in. You tell them to go back to the app.

Somewhere around step 6, you are explaining screen sharing to someone who called you because they couldn’t find a button on a screen. That’s the recursion. You are using words to describe an interface to a person whose entire problem is that they cannot parse an interface.

The AnchorGrid path:

1. They open AnchorGrid.
2. They read you nine digits.
3. They tap Start Broadcast on the one prompt iOS shows them.

You’re in. You’re looking at their screen. You never said the word “share.”

The steps are the product

That’s the whole thing. There is no clever technology claim here. AnchorGrid can’t remote-control an iPhone, and neither can Teams, and neither can TeamViewer, because Apple exposes no public API that lets a third-party app do it. Anyone selling you iOS remote control is selling you view-only with better marketing.

So if everyone is capped at the same ceiling, view the screen and talk the user through it, then the only thing left to compete on is how much friction sits between “user calls” and “I can see it.”

Teams has a lot. Not because Teams is bad, but because Teams is a meeting platform that happens to support screen sharing. The screen share is a feature inside a meeting inside a collaboration suite. Getting to it means traversing all of that. Every layer you traverse is a layer you have to narrate.

A support tool starts at the screen. That’s the only difference. It’s a small difference and it’s the entire job.

Where Teams actually wins

I want to be straight about this, because I’d rather you make a good decision than a fast one.

Use Teams if:

• You do this twice a month. The friction is real but it’s not worth a purchase order.
• Your users are technical. If the person on the phone can find Share, then Start Broadcast, without narration, the step count collapses and Teams is fine.
• Procurement is a wall. Teams is already approved. Nothing beats already approved.
• You need it right now. It’s in your tenant. Go.

Teams is free, deployed, and understood. That is a genuinely strong position and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

The friction starts costing real money when:

• You’re running volume. Six minutes of setup friction on twenty calls a week is two hours of your help desk, every week, spent explaining screen sharing.
• Your users are non-technical. The narration cost isn’t linear: with the right user it’s zero, with the wrong user it’s the whole call.
• You need to know who looked at whose phone. Teams gives you meeting logs, not a support audit trail. Those are different artifacts, and only one of them survives an audit question.
• The connection is bad. When a session is garbage on cellular, Teams tells you nothing. You can’t distinguish “their LTE is dying” from “the app is hung,” so you guess, and you guess out loud, on the phone, to a frustrated person.
• The user is outside your tenant. Guest access for a screen share is its own small ordeal.

What Intune doesn’t give you

Worth saying plainly, because it surprises people: Intune’s Remote Help doesn’t cover iOS. Windows, Android, macOS, yes. iOS is a cross on Microsoft’s own comparison table. The only iOS entries there are Teams screen sharing and the legacy TeamViewer integration.

So if you’re an Intune shop, you don’t have a screen-view path. You have a meeting platform you’re using as one, and a legacy integration Microsoft has labeled legacy.

That’s the hole. It’s a real hole. I built AnchorGrid because I was standing in it.

What AnchorGrid is

A nine-digit code, a browser tab, and a live view of the iPhone screen.

Nothing to install on the technician side. Per-technician pricing, no per-device licensing, no minimum spend. WebRTC peer-to-peer with TURN relay fallback, DTLS 1.3, AES-GCM. Microsoft Entra SSO, so it slots into the identity you already have.

It views the screen. It does not control the phone, and on iOS no third-party app can.

What AnchorGrid isn’t

I’d rather you find out from me than from a trial.

It’s iOS only today. Android is in active development, arriving at launch. If your fleet is mixed, it solves half your problem right now.

Session recording isn’t there yet. If you need an auditable video trail of what a technician saw, that’s a real gap and I’m not going to talk you out of it being one.

It’s early. You’d be an early customer, with everything that implies: direct access to the person who wrote it, and the risk profile of a young product. Some shops want the first; some can’t accept the second. Both are reasonable.

The honest recommendation

Try Teams first. I mean that. It costs nothing, it’s already approved, and if you run two of these a month it is genuinely the right answer.

Then count. Count the minutes between “user calls” and “I can see the screen.” Count how many of those minutes you spent describing a button to someone who can’t see buttons.

If the number is small, keep using Teams. You’ve saved yourself a purchase order.

If the number is large, if you have found yourself on the phone saying “no, the other three dots” to a warehouse manager in Tupelo, wondering how you got here, then the friction is the product, and that’s what this is for.

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AnchorGrid is iOS remote support built for IT teams. Nine digits, a browser tab, and you’re looking at the screen. anchorgrid.io