Just moved off o AnyDesk as I was about to pay up for a Pro yearly subscription after discovering the completely free RustDesk with its hostable server solution as well.
Just passing on the positive discovery to other QT3ers.
I’m not sure I’d trust anything free giving network access to my computer.
Uh, sure you do you. Using whether or not their model charges to assess trustworthiness alone is foolish.
I use Chrome Remote Desktop. Works great
I’ve been using Chrome Remote Desktop for years to bypass my work’s VPN. I like to work from my main gaming PC, but I also like to browse QT3 and porn.
How do I get an invite to the QT3 porn sub-forum?!?
It’s actually a sub-forum comprised of user submissions, you do not want access to that.
I use Parsec and you should too. It’s meant to stream videogames so it’s low latency and responsive. You can choose to just stream your whole desktop. Works fantastic, I use it to play videogames on long conference calls at work.
Parsec bypasses NAT to work from everywhere similar to Tailscale, so you don’t need to forward ports in your router. I blocked all that stuff in my firewall as I’m always VPN’d in via wireguard anyway, but there’s no indication it’s particularly insecure.
Streaming 1440p at 60fps with h.265 uses around 50Mbps of bandwidth, but you can customize that if you have a slow upload. Oh and it’s completely free; they do have a paid version if you want to stream multiple monitors, but I don’t bother. I just shift between them with the hotkey, ctrl-shift-D.
There’s also Moonlight, which is basically the same thing but fully open-source on the client side, but it does require a Nvidia GPU with GeForce Experience as it uses Nvidia’s backend to stream. It also doesn’t do all the NAT traversal stuff. I haven’t bothered because Parsec satisfies me in every way. Well, not sexually. It won’t do that one thing with its tongue, you know what I mean, I’ve got to have that.
Any solution that works for iPad clients? @fire has been looking for something that lets her help her grandmother…
AnyDesk and RustDesk both have iOS apps. AnyDesk has become restrictive like TeamViewer did before it (they both were lax until they received private investment and now have to recoup it with profits) became too draconian on pro-sumer users.
If I cared about iOS/android remote desktop clients I’d go with Moonlight. You do need an Nvidia GPU in the host though.
For a grandma, yeah, something like rustdesk or chrome remote desktop makes a lot more sense.
TIL I’m a grandma. Clearly some weird time travel shit in my future.
Thanks, folks. My grandma is 96 and blind; she has an iPad (though she used to run Windows on an Alienware back when she could see) so firmly committed to the iOS/iPadOS universe. Things I need to do remotely:
- Manage the desktop / home screen. Stuff disappears or gets rearranged sometimes. And sometimes “things stop working entirely” or “there was a popup,” and I need to be able to troubleshoot remotely.
- Manage the YouTube stream. I should be curating her playlists (which I can do now, by logging into her Google account), and setting up things to watch next (which I cannot do).
- Manage whatever radio program she uses to listen to radio streams. This one doesn’t need much but sometimes it “stops working.”
Recommendations / thoughts?
I don’t have a recommendation as I’ve never tried it, but supposedly TeamViewer QuickSupport will do what you need. There’s also the built-in “switch control” but it looks like that needs both devices on the same apple ID and network, so you’d need to VPN in to your grandma’s house.
Teams and Zoom also allow remote control sessions.
Only problem there is she’s blind. Not sure how that would work. I know iOS has a ton of accessibility stuff.
It has a built in screen reader, apparently.
What’s the best way to get Parsec up on a TV? I’ve been using it to stream to my laptop, which works great, definitely better than Moonlight, but it would be nice to use the bigger screen. Doesn’t seem to be an AppleTV app, and mirroring the laptop screen via Airplay adds a bit of stutter. I tried using the Xbox browser but it seemed to hang when I tried to connect.
Devices:
Xbox X
PS5
AppleTV
Windows and Mac laptops and a Windows desktop (the one doing the streaming).
Amazon Fire stick, I think
TV is a 2017 LG
I don’t have a good solution for Parsec.
Instead, I use the Moonlight app on my Xbox Series X to stream emulated Switch games from my gaming PC. It works beautifully, and you don’t need to worry about re-pairing your Xbox controller or anything. It’s also much lower latency using the native Xbox RF than bluetooth. Rumble works too. I played dozens of hours of Zelda this way so it really no-bullshit works.
My general findings are that Moonlight works much better than Parsec for game streaming, lower latency and superior image quality, but Parsec is the exact same degree better for remote desktop. Moonlight doesn’t support a hardware remote cursor, which makes it tiny and black and hard to see on a TV.
You could of course just plug your laptop into the TV.
Yeah, that’s probably the best solution, though a tad clunky as all my inputs are being used.
I haven’t done a huge amount of testing, and it’s not exactly apples to apples, but while I found WH40K Inquisitor Martyr worked fine on Moonlight, the stuttering in Diablo is really quite bad, whereas Parsec is butter smooth.