Desktop
See and control your Linux computer's screen from the phone, tunnelled inside SSH.
The Desktop tab shows the computer's screen and lets you control it. It works on Linux, with X11 or with a Wayland desktop that has the desktop portal's Remote Desktop (KDE Plasma, GNOME). On macOS and Windows the tab says the desktop isn't available there yet.
Requirements
| Needs | |
|---|---|
| All | FFmpeg |
| Wayland | GStreamer with its PipeWire plugin (gst-plugin-pipewire or gstreamer1.0-pipewire) and PipeWire's pw-link |
link-host doctor tells you what's missing.
First time on Wayland
The first time, the computer shows the desktop's own screen sharing dialog, naming Link Host. Someone at the computer chooses the screen and Allow; the phone says "Choose Allow on …'s screen" while it waits. Link Host keeps the portal's restore token (~/.config/link/host/desktop-portal-token), so later sessions start without asking. Stopping the share from the desktop's own controls ends the stream.
Using it
- Open the computer's Desktop tab; the stream starts by itself.
- Trackpad mode (the default) moves the pointer as you drag, like a laptop's trackpad; Direct mode clicks where you tap. Pinch to zoom (up to 6×) and pan with two fingers.
- Full screen hides the phone's bars and turns it landscape for a wide screen.
- Video is H.264, decoded on the phone; where either side can't do H.264 it falls back to JPEG frames, sending only changed ones.
How it stays private
When you open the tab, the app runs link-host desktop --listen 127.0.0.1:0 over SSH. Link Host serves the stream on a free port of the computer's loopback only, with a token made for that session, and the app tunnels to it through the SSH connection. Nothing listens on the computer's network, and the stream stops when the phone disconnects.