Mac Nano Cyberdeck uses an M4 Mac Mini that slides in like a Game Boy cartridge

Apple’s M4 Mac mini is already very small. Strip away its aluminium shell, though, and things get much more interesting. A custom project dubbed the Mac Nano takes the main hardware from Apple’s compact desktop and moves it into a removable 3D-printed module. Slide this module into a larger cyberdeck chassis and you get something rather unusual: a portable M4 Mac with a 7-inch touchscreen, miniature keyboard, battery pack and Nintendo Joy-Con controllers clipped to either side. It’s not trying to become a homemade MacBook. The layout goes in another direction. The Mac mini acts as the computer module, with the display, keyboard, controls and battery living in a separate handheld chassis. And yes, macOS runs on the finished machine.

The M4 Mac mini gets much smaller

Creating the Mac Nano starts with an M4 Mac mini stripped of its standard enclosure. Apple’s logic board stays, along with the original heatsink and blower. Keeping Apple’s cooling gear makes sense here. The finished computer module isn’t as thin as a bare motherboard, coming in at roughly 37.5 mm deep, but the M4 chip retains the thermal hardware built for it.

The printed enclosure forms a compact cartridge-like computer. It slides into rails on the rear section of the cyberdeck, so the Mac itself isn’t permanently fixed inside the larger case. Several short cable extensions bring the Mac mini’s connections to useful positions around the enclosure. Remove the module and most of the handheld hardware remains intact. It’s a tidy idea. A future computer module could use the same chassis if its size and connections fit.

There’s a 7-inch 120 Hz touchscreen up front

The front section carries a 7-inch IPS touchscreen running at 120 Hz. It’s mounted inside its own printed frame rather than glued permanently into the main shell. If the display needs replacing or the design changes later, it can come out without dismantling the entire machine.

Beneath the screen sits a very small QWERTY keyboard with its own touchpad. It started life as a wireless keyboard, but the internal battery has been removed and USB-C now handles the connection. So there’s no separate keyboard battery to charge.

Internal USB connections required a bit more work. Compact USB 2.0 splitter boards had their larger sockets removed, creating a smaller internal hub for the keyboard and other components inside the chassis. It’s the sort of modification hidden from view once the case goes together, yet it helps explain how much hardware has been packed into such limited space.

Joy-Cons turn it into a curious macOS handheld

Nintendo Joy-Con rails sit on each side of the cyberdeck. The controllers aren’t paired over Bluetooth. Parts from official Nintendo charging grips provide a wired connection, leaving the Joy-Cons attached directly to the system.

macOS doesn’t offer simple native support for wired Joy-Cons, so Steam handles controller mapping. Once configured, the sticks and buttons can work with compatible games and other software. The arrangement gives the machine a shape somewhere between a tiny laptop, handheld gaming PC and traditional cyberdeck, without committing fully to any single category. Remove the controllers and it becomes a compact keyboard-and-touchscreen Mac again.

Four 18650 cells keep the Mac running away from a socket

Making an M4 Mac mini portable needs more than fitting a screen to it. The cyberdeck uses four high-drain 18650 cells connected to a modified UPS board, providing around 36 Wh of usable battery capacity. The system can move between an external supply and its internal cells without shutting down macOS.

Charging reaches roughly 16.8 V at 1 A. Running heavier workloads during charging calls for a 100 W USB-C PD supply. For lighter tasks, including video playback, the battery can keep the machine running for around six hours.

A Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3 microcontroller watches the battery system alongside an INA219 sensor and two thermistors. Voltage, current, remaining capacity and cell temperature are passed over USB to a custom macOS menu-bar app. So battery information appears directly inside macOS rather than relying on a separate display bolted onto the case.

It’s a Mac mini with a very different job

The interesting part here isn’t simply portability. The Mac Nano treats Apple’s M4 Mac mini as a removable computing cartridge. The processor, storage, memory and cooling hardware live together in one module, leaving the screen, keyboard, controllers and battery inside another.

It makes for a strange little Mac, in a good way. There’s still a full M4 Mac mini at the centre of the project, complete with Apple’s cooling hardware and macOS. It’s simply been rearranged into a machine Apple doesn’t sell: a touchscreen-equipped, battery-operated handheld Mac with detachable controls and a tiny physical keyboard.

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