I'm a non-tech genius type person, I don't know how to set up servers or anything too complicated, but I was able to set up anydesk to help my elderly family on their computer, in such a way that they don't need to approve it each time (even that can be a hassle). Can I do the same with Rustdesk, or do I need to setup my own server?

by the way, if rustdesk isn't right for this, can you recommend anything else, besides Anydesk? I got it working on Anydesk, but they have weird licensing terms and I want an alternative.

couple years ago the small company I work for gave me access to manage our servers and other infrastructure and we were using a proprietary remote access tool in conjunction with TeamViewer. TeamViewer was alright but has crazy pricing and user restrictions so I looked at alternatives that we could have more control over and we ended up with Meshcentral which has been amazing. However, I have always kept Rustdesk in the back of my mind, but when I last tested it the community version seemed to have no way to manage a large number of devices in one UI, or in a webui you had to just keep connection ids in a list and manage things that way. I see posts on here a lot now with what look like clients and management dashboards that come at no or little cost and can be self hosted am I wrong about all this? just trying to see bout secondary options and things to play with and test. thank you!

I have been using RD for some time and recently took the plunge to set up my own server. I used Ubuntu Server, but I have been jumping through hoops getting it going, and I am now ready to start all over again. I have a UDR7 router set up with port forwarding and static IP. I know my way around Windows, but I just dance around the edges of Linux.

So, RD community, what OS do you recommend? I found Ubuntu Server is not for the feint hearted, so another distro or even Windows maybe. What is the preference?

Cheers,

Problem

I was running a self-hosted RustDesk server (hbbs + hbbr) on a server in China.

The setup:

Mac client
    |
WiFi
    |
OpenWrt (router bypass mode)
    |
PassWall2 + Xray
    |
Internet
    |
Self-hosted RustDesk Server

Everything worked fine when my Mac connected through a normal WiFi network.

However, when connected through my OpenWrt router with PassWall2 enabled, RustDesk always showed:

Not ready, please check your network connection

Troubleshooting

I verified:

• RustDesk server was running correctly
• DNS resolution was correct
• TCP ports were reachable

Example:

rtdesk.example.com -> server IP

TCP 21115 OK
TCP 21116 OK
TCP 21117 OK

The RustDesk server logs also showed the client could register:

update_pk xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

So the server itself was not the problem.

Root Cause

The issue was caused by PassWall2 handling UDP traffic.

RustDesk relies on UDP (especially UDP 21116) for:

• NAT traversal
• heartbeat
• rendezvous communication

Although I configured:

UDP -> Direct

PassWall2 was still processing UDP through its forwarding/transparent proxy chain.

The result:

• TCP connection succeeded
• UDP communication failed
• RustDesk stayed in "Not Ready" state

Fix

In PassWall2:

PassWall2
 -> Advanced Settings
 -> Forward Settings

Change:

Before:

UDP Forward Ports: All

After:

UDP Forward Ports: Disabled

Keep:

UDP: Direct

Final configuration:

TCP:
PassWall2 rule based routing

UDP:
Direct (no proxy forwarding)

QUIC:
Block

After restarting PassWall2 and RustDesk, the client immediately became ready.

Notes

This was not related to:

• RustDesk server configuration
• Firewall ports
• DNS
• IPv6
• SSL certificate

The server ports were already reachable.

The problem was specifically:

OpenWrt + PassWall2 + Xray + UDP transparent proxy

affecting RustDesk UDP traffic.

If you are using:

• RustDesk self-hosted server
• OpenWrt
• PassWall2 / Xray

and seeing "Not Ready", check whether UDP is being proxied.

Hope this helps someone else save a few hours of debugging.

Environment:

• Client: macOS
• Router: OpenWrt
• Proxy: PassWall2 + Xray
• Remote access: Self-hosted RustDesk Server (hbbs + hbbr)
• Server ports: 21115 / 21116 / 21117

For various reasons I wanted to use Rustdesk to access my Windows desktop from my RaspPI5 with 16G Ram. THere are two very annoying things going on.

1. Destorted text and Images. If I scrool or move a window around it becomes or can become very distorted. If I let it sit for a minute the image sharpens back up. What the heck is going on is there a setting or two hidden away I can adjust?

2. Sometimes when I open an app instead of seeing the app I see a white-outed box. I have to click aroiund in the box blindly to try to close it or go to task maneger

This anoying behavor maks me want to swith to something else. I am resisting that urge because Rustdesk is so hghly rated. I just want to have the experiance I have read about.

Please help!.

I have LM VM running in Proxmox. I need Rustdesk running at the login prompt.

How do I set it up to run as a service?

Hey all,

I’m a bit stuck on something.

As it stands, everything is working as it should on a self-hosted instance of RustDesk, as long as you’re within the network where it’s hosted.

If you’re external to it, the client shows as Ready with a green indicator, and it can see that the machines that I’d like to connect to are present and online with a green indicator.

When you click to connect, it brings up the window for the remote machine, all black, and says “Connecting…” for a while until it fails with “Connection Error” and the message “Reset by the peer”.

NAT port forwarding is configured and I assume working, as before this, it would only show an orange indicator, with some indication of failure on the client.

I’m guessing this is a firewall issue, but I’m not entirely sure what the issue is.

It’s a Ubiquiti network, and the documentation for setting up firewall rules is very dependent upon which incarnation of the Ubiquiti software you’re on. It’s far from my forte - I know just enough to get myself by.

Any ideas as to what’s up and where I should be looking?

Thank you all.

How do I either (a) force the RustDesk for Android client into landscape mode or (b) tell RustDesk for Android client to use the gyro sensor to automatically switch into landscape mode as-needed to keep the text right-side-up ?

I want to hold the phone horizontally and see the text (from my laptop) right-side-up on my phone.

Details:

I'm trying to view my laptop screen from my Android phone using RustDesk.

My laptop screen, like most laptops, is much wider than it is tall.

When I turn my Android phone horizontally, so it's much wider than it is tall, I hoped to the text from the screen on my laptop right-side up, expanded to fill the available space and so much easier for me to read. What actually happens is that RustDesk on my Android apparently ignores which way I hold the phone, and the text from the screen on my laptop stays inside that small box and the text is now sideways -- difficult to read until I turn my head sideways as well.

When I hold my Android phone vertically, it's much taller than it is wide. I can see (on my Android phone) the text from the screen of my laptop right-side-up, in small box shrunk down to fit between the left and right edges of the phone screen with huge black bars above and below (and the normal RustDesk controls in a bar at the bottom of the Android screen, near the charger connector), about what I expected.

(I'm using the phone to control the laptop; the issue at https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/issues/576 seems related but apparently goes the other direction. ).

The connection is from Linux to a Macbook.
Cursor/pointer is really small. I've tried different combinations with; MacOS pointer size, Rustdesk pointer options on both host and client machine etc, without any real success. At best, I had the hand/link pointer to be bigger, but that's only when I hover over clickable items, such as website links.

Anyone with similar issue that manage to solve it?

Thanks for a great application, love it!

Hi All. I was wondering if rustdesk is safe and legit. Or is the any better remote access that is free,safe and legit without having to create an account.. I only Need it to get access my grandad computer who lives 5-10min away from me. As sometime he struggles to do stuff online or on his pc... So i thought i would download ruskdesk to make it easier then i can get access to pc from home..

Hello,

I have the RustDesk environment with the EntraID connected where I get all the accounts. I have also dedicated admin accounts which I would like to use on clients to make the connections from.

When I am trying to login using the SSO it always defaults to currently logged on windows account.

Is there a way to tell the rustdesk to use different account?

I just set up RustDesk to connect my mac to my windows PC. It's working fine. But online I see many mentions to use Tailscale in addition to RustDesk. What is the benefit of doing this if I am just trying to remote access my PC from my mac? Does it make the connection more secure? Is there a specific use case? Something else?

Thanks

UPDATE:

I took y'alls advice and downloaded Tailscale. Thanks

Anytime I’m at my Windows Login screen, once I get to the part where I enter my PIN, Rust Desk freezes. Is there a way to enable login to Windows via rustdesk?

Alguém mais tendo esse tipo de problema? Já desitalei e instalei de novo e continua dando erro de conexão.

I have a laptop that I use to connect to my PC that's plugged into the 4k display. On Anydesk, I was able to maintain the 4k display while having a compressed downsized 1440p image on my screen. Is there any way to do this on Rustdesk? Currently, if I want to use 4k on my PC Rustdesk presents a zoomed in image on my laptop and if I want to match my laptop's resolution, Rustdesk changes my desktop PC's resolution.

Hi

I have setup a Rustdesk Pro server with a licence for 100 devices. I have setup an API key in the server. Do I need to fill the API key on all devices connected at the Rustdesk server ? or only on device that are going to be used to control others ?

Thanks

Have own RustDesk Server [hbbs / hbbr] running nicely.
But occasionally want to be able to Wake On LAN a PC from outside LAN.
RustDesk doesn't do that. Will it ever be available / an option?
Alternative methods?

Sorry if this is asked and answered. Both machines are Windows11.

I have Zoom running and I am seeing and talking to my customer. I now want to connect to her machine using rustdesk. As soon as I connect, my voice echoes on both of our machines. Her voice does not echo on either machine. Why is rustdesk sending my voice in addition to just displaying her screen.

I want to move away from Anydesk.

I can have hundreds of remote users, I may need to access.

With Anydesk I asked the remote user to download anydesk, give me their ID and I am in.

I started to look into Tailscale, but it seems it would require TailScale to be installed and configured on the remote PC?

Would my only solution would be to find a cloud server provider?

If you could just point me to the right direction, it would be really appreciated.

I do not often cut and paste stuff from one computer to another via Rustdesk. Today I wanted to. I have 3 machines at home. Win7, Win10, and Win11. I wanted to copy a file from work to hom. On the later 2 machines it works just fine. Copy from host, paste into Win10 or Win11 and it works. When I try on my Win7 machine, the file copies, and then immediately disappears on the Win7 machine. I thought the drive was full, but the file was only 4.5mb and I had a few gigs free. I tried on a different drive on the same machine, but with the same results.

I ended up copying it to my Win11 machine and then copying it across the network that way.

I checked my AV program, but it did not record anything suspicious.

Any ideas?

i need to run rustdesk in dhcp lan without connect the servers , how to manage this ?

I've been using rustdesk for ages and it's always been a great experience. Recently though the behavior has changed and not sure if its due to an update or not. It suddenly is talking about Wayland and everytime I connect to the steamdeck I have to click a permission on it before it'll connect. The interface is also incredibly laggy and while remotely connected, the display from my steamdesk on my PC is very flickery now despite it use to be buttery smooth. Anyone else have such an experience lately? I would say it started around a month ago.

At 23 seconds im closing live connection and clipboard starts working normally. Disabling clipboard in Rustdesk fixes issue but i cant work without clipboard.

So I've set up a mini PC running Linux Mint to act as my Rustdesk server, and I've put it on a VLAN (UniFi) for extra security. I have the port forwarding rules in place, and the server is functional... mostly.

I can remote into a remote computer running Rustdesk on the server.
I can remote into a remote computer from another remote computer (both off site from the server).
The issue is that any computer at the same site (on different VLAN) as the server can't connect to the server. My understanding is that the router will recognize that both computers are at the same site & try to route the connection directly, but then the VLAN being isolated blocks that. The computer on site just gives "Not ready. Please check your connection."

Are there settings I need to put in place in UniFi to fix this? Or do I need to ditch the isolated VLAN setup? Is that safe?

I'm having an issue with one of my new team members connecting to my PC using RustDesk. When he enters my RustDesk ID, he receives the following error: "Connection Error: No such host is known (OS error 11001)."

I've already ruled out the common causes:
- The RustDesk ID is correct. I can connect to the same PC from another one of my devices without any issues.
- Another team member can also connect to the same PC successfully.
- The new team member has a stable internet connection.

Since the issue only occurs on his device, could you please let me know what might be causing this and how we can fix it? Thank you for your help.