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Comment by MysticOracle | Hacker News Reader

Tailscale tangential use case! :)

I was looking for remote access software to help family with their PC and came across RustDesk(https://rustdesk.com/) but it needs a server. Found out it can work without a server if you have Tailscale installed. No fees for any of this and works on many platforms.

Tutorial for Rustdesk + Tailscale setup for remote desktop access: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27apZcZrwks

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Yes I figured this out too, you can actually put any IP address you want in the code field for RustDesk, it doesn’t have to be a RustDesk code only.

Little tip for anyone who decides to try this:

You need to enable IP access on the device you intend to connect to. It's under the security settings in RustDesk.

I've been playing around with it. The iOS RustDesk app is nice, and I've been controlling my Mac Mini at home using my iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard, and it's shockingly smooth!

How secure is all this? Not really into networking and I always wondered if this has any risks.

If you're just connecting over Tailscale and your machine is otherwise not exposing the (configurable) port to the internet, it's fine as far as I know. Set up firewall entries if you are concerned.

The only other thing I can add is - with very little configuration, you can allow direct routing to your entire local lan. If anyone is interested, I’ll document it. I’ve set it up in an lxc container on my Proxmox home server and am very happy with it. Allows direct access to all my VMs on the go!

Oh lovely. How is your experience with RustDesk? Is it better than VNC?

Been using it for a while, older versions had memory leaks with multiple monitors (or virtual monitors too), nowadays seems better.

Supports various video encoders, various bitrate settings, allows sharing clipboard (though still has an annoying bug where sometimes copying something new into the clipboard doesn't work and only 2nd attempt works) and the relay is also easy to setup and host, in addition to it being free!

Honestly my favorite software in this space since RealVNC decided they want to be greedy (and since VNC / RDP kinda sucks in my experience).

my experience with RustDesk + Tailscale is really good. when i only needed windows remote devices, the Windows Remote Desktop over Tailscale is great. I used RustDesk for access to macOS and Android devices (all over Tailscale) and works great too. No complaints really. Much less hassle to setup than Parsec (latency isn't as good though), and way snappier than AnyDesk through their network. Great tool enabled by Tailscale.

+1 for RustDesk over Tailscale. It works even better than Screens for macOS.

> Is it better than VNC?

It's the year 2026 out there. Anything is better than VNC.

How does it compare to jump desktop

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