Questions and answers

Yes, for personal use, with no account and no registration. Commercial use, in a business or for clients, is on request: write a couple of words about the task at vareyko.com/contact, and we will agree on the terms.

This site describes PC Remote only and makes no claims about other products: their makers describe them best. Here is what PC Remote is, to hold against what matters to you.

• No account: a computer is known by the fingerprint of its key, not by a login.
• In a local network it works without the internet and without any server.
• Over the internet the relay passes only ciphertext, and the password never leaves the two computers.
• Windows and macOS: a PC controls a Mac, and a Mac a PC.
• On Windows, one file of 7.0 MB that installs, updates and removes itself; on the Mac, an installer package.
• As a Windows service it works on the lock screen, at sign-in and with administrator windows.
• Files travel through the clipboard: copy on one computer, paste on the other.
• An English and a Russian interface; free for personal use.

Yes. The Mac version is the same program: it shares the Mac's screen, mouse, keyboard, files, clipboard and sound, and controls other computers, Windows ones included. It needs macOS 13 or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel (tested so far on Apple Silicon only). Two differences matter most: it works while you are logged in on the Mac, not before, and a locked Mac can be unlocked remotely, so there the connection password is the only lock.

Install PC Remote on both. On the Mac, the setup assistant asks for a connection password and for two macOS permissions, screen recording and Accessibility. On the same network the Mac then appears in the list on the PC by itself; from anywhere else, type in the nine-digit number shown at the bottom of the Mac's main window, then the password. The other way round works the same: the Mac controls the PC from its own window.

No. A computer is known by the fingerprint of the key it creates on first start, and over the internet by a nine-digit number the relay gives to that key. There is nothing to sign up for.

On the computer you want to reach, set a password of at least 12 characters: on Windows, right-click the tray icon, then Settings; on a Mac, the setup assistant asks for it. The computer connects to the relay and shows its nine-digit number at the bottom of the main window. On the other computer, type that number in and enter the password. Neither needs a public IP address or port forwarding: both connect out to the relay.

Yes. Computers on the same local network find each other and connect directly, with no internet and no server in between. The relay is needed only when the computers are on different networks; when both routes are open, the local one wins.

The relay passes along encrypted traffic it cannot read: not the screen, the input, the files, the sound or the clipboard, and not the password. What it does know is which computers are online: their numbers, key fingerprints, names and addresses. It lists them to nobody and answers only about the numbers it is asked about. After fifty wrong passwords from one address within an hour, it stops connecting that address for an hour. The relay at remote.vareyko.com is run by the author of PC Remote.

Every computer has a permanent P-256 key pair, and its ID is the fingerprint of the public key. Each session builds its key from three parts: two fresh one-time keys, so traffic recorded today cannot be decrypted later; the computer's permanent key, so it really is that computer; and the password, so it really is somebody allowed in. The stream is then encrypted with AES-256-GCM in numbered records, so no piece of it can be altered, reordered or replayed. It is all built on the standard cryptography libraries of Go.

Because over the internet the password is the lock, and the program is honest about how strong that lock is. The password never crosses the network, but a single connection gives an attacker what is needed to test guesses at home, offline, at the speed of PBKDF2 with 120,000 iterations. That stops guessing a long password and does not stop a short one. Three or four unrelated words in a row make the easiest strong password.

Yes, when the program is installed as a Windows service, the recommended way. The service starts with the computer and works before anyone signs in, so the lock screen, the sign-in screen and windows asking for administrator rights are visible and take your mouse and keyboard. Installed as an ordinary program, it cannot reach them, and it says so on the screen instead of showing black.

On a Mac, while you are logged in, its real lock screen comes through, and with the Accessibility permission it can be unlocked remotely. After a restart, until you log in at the Mac itself, it cannot be reached at all.

Yes. Pick any monitor, or see all of them stitched into one picture, laid out as in the Windows display settings. In the stitched picture, only the monitor where something changed is sent again, not all of them.

Watching a Mac, you pick one of its monitors at a time: only the Windows version stitches them.

Yes. Copy files or folders in Explorer or Finder as usual and paste them on the other computer with Ctrl+V or Cmd+V, in either direction, between Windows and a Mac too. Files cross the network only at the moment you paste, up to 1 GB per copy, and a paste is always a copy, never a move. Text travels by itself, pictures on paste.

The warning appears because the file is not signed with a code-signing certificate, not because anything was found in it. Check its SHA-256 against the one on the download page with Get-FileHash, then click More info and Run anyway. If the checksum does not match, do not run the file.

macOS refuses because the package is not signed with an Apple Developer ID and not notarized by Apple, not because anything was found in it. Check its SHA-256 with shasum -a 256 against the one on the download page. Then, on macOS 15 and later, try to open it once and click Open Anyway in System Settings → Privacy & Security. If the checksum does not match, do not open the file.

On macOS 12–14, Control-click the package in Finder and choose Open.

In a local network, UDP 8888 to find computers and TCP 8889 to 8892 for control, screen, files and sound; the setup opens them in the Windows firewall by itself. A Mac uses the same ports, and its package leaves the macOS firewall alone. Over the internet nothing has to be opened: the computer connects out to the relay on port 8890. IPv4 only.

Settings → Apps → PC Remote → Uninstall removes everything except the computer's key, its number, its settings and the list of known computers, so that after a reinstall it keeps the same number. To erase those too, run the downloaded file with -uninstall -purge.

On a Mac, download uninstall-mac.sh from the download page and run sudo bash uninstall-mac.sh in Terminal. It removes the program and its service for every account and asks about the settings: --purge erases them with the key, --keep-settings keeps them.

Not yet: it is coming soon. The Android app controls a computer from the phone, with a touchpad mode, a tap mode and gestures. The Mac version is already out, on the download page.

The program records nothing: the picture is never saved anywhere, there is no telemetry, and it does not check for updates by itself. Besides the computers on your network and the ones you connect to, it talks only to the relay, and what the relay knows is in the answer about it above.