The official Raspberry Pi has recently released the beta version of Raspberry Pi Connect: a secure, easy-to-use way to remotely access your Raspberry Pi from anywhere on the planet using only a web browser.Raspberry Pi Connect Beta
Remote access to the Raspberry Pi's desktop is a very useful feature. There are a number of technologies that enable this, including VNC and of course the X protocol itself. But they can be difficult to configure, especially if you're trying to access computers on different local networks; and of course, with the transition of the Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm to Wayland, classic X remote desktop support is no longer available.
How do I get Raspberry Pi Connect?
First, Raspberry Pi Connect requires that your Raspberry Pi is running the 64-bit distribution of Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm that uses the Wayland window server. This means that you currently need a Raspberry Pi 5, Raspberry Pi 4, or Raspberry Pi 400.
Assuming you are using one of these models, make sure you have the latest Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm from Raspberry Pi Imager, open a terminal, and type:
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sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install rpi-connect
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Then reboot the Raspberry Pi and you will find a new icon in the system tray at the top right of the screen. Click on that icon and select “Login” to get started. Hopefully you'll find these instructions simple enough to understand, but there is additional documentation on known limitations during testing if you need it. Document
The Mechanism Behind Connect
Paul Mucur, Raspberry Pi's web developer, explains how the underlying technology works:
When you connect to your Raspberry Pi using Raspberry Pi Connect through a web browser, we establish a secure peer-to-peer connection between the two using WebRTC: the same real-time communication technology used by the in-browser clients of Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet.
Our “rpi-connect” daemon for the Raspberry Pi OS listens for new screen-sharing sessions from the Raspberry Pi Connect website and negotiates the best (i.e. lowest latency) connection between the in-browser VNC client and the VNC server running on the device. In general, once a connection is established, no traffic needs to pass through our servers.
If for any reason it is not possible to establish a direct connection between the browser and the Raspberry Pi device, rpi-connect and the browser may choose to forward traffic securely through our servers, using DTLS encryption.
Peer-to-peer and relay connections
Currently, the Raspberry Pi Connect service has only one relay ( TURN ) server located in the UK. This means that if rpi-connect chooses to relay traffic, latency can be quite high. Hovering over the padlock icon in your browser while connecting will indicate whether your connection is being relayed, so you can determine whether changes to your network settings can improve the connection.
Our intention is that Raspberry Pi Connect will remain free (like beer) for individual users with non-relayed connections, and there is no limit to the number of devices. We don't yet know how many people will need to relay their traffic through our TURN servers; we'll be keeping a close eye on bandwidth usage and deciding how to handle these connections in the future.
As I said at the beginning, Raspberry Pi Connect is currently in beta, so keep in mind that you may occasionally encounter limitations or bugs.
Author of this article: Raspberry pi Labs