RustDesk
Open source virtual / remote desktop infrastructure for everyone! Alternative to proprietary TeamViewer and AnyDesk.
- Free • Open Source
- Remote Desktop Tool
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Android
- iPhone
- Android Tablet
- iPad
- Self-Hosted
- F-Droid
What is RustDesk?
The open source alternative to TeamViewer and AnyDesk. Display and control your PC and Android devices from anywhere at anytime. Works out of the box, no configuration required. You have full control of your data, with no concerns about security. Features:
- Security: End-to-end encryption.
- Privacy: Own your data. Easily setup RustDesk self-hosted solution on your infrastructure.
- Simple: We keep things simple and try to make simpler when possible.
- Lightweight: No administrative privileges or installation needed for Windows.
- Console: Track access log and manage permissions from a modern UI.
- File Transfer: Remote File Transfer on all Devices and Platforms.
- Cross-Platform: Works on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Web.
- Self-hosted: You can use our public rendezvous/relay server, or self-hosting, or write your own server.
RustDesk Screenshots
RustDesk Features
RustDesk information
- Developed byPurslane Ltd.
- LicensingOpen Source (AGPL-3.0) and Free product.
- Written in
- RatingAverage rating of 4.5
- Alternatives114 alternatives listed
Supported Languages
- English
Apple AppStore
- Updated
- 2.81 avg rating
GitHub repository
- 51,021 Stars
- 5,593 Forks
- 60 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
Tags
- Remote Desktop
- File transfer
Fully open source (including relay server although it's a minimal implementation lacking security) remote desktop software alternative to TeamViewer, works very similarly, easy for both parties to use. Cross-platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android). No need to create an account, it works by sharing an automatically generated ID and password. Very fast and good quality streaming remote desktop agent (tested with 1080p YouTube videos), 2nd only to Remotely in open-source remote desktop agents. It also streams audio. Supports transparent bidirectional clipboard.
If you want an exactly similar experience to TeamViewer but using a FOSS software, RustDesk is the one. I highly recommend, and it has become my backup software for remote desktop control or for people who have a hard time dealing with agents that are different from TeamViewer's ID/password system.
Tip: reduce bitrate (custom graphical options in RustDesk options) and reduce the target machine's resolution and you'll have streaming performances similar if not better to the NX protocol (NoMachine), but RustDesk does not have a native option to do that.
Excellent alternative to much more famous services such as TeamViewer or Anydesk. Fast, simple, effective.
No it's not completely open source anymore. The server component is closed source and pay2use. But what's more important is that the author is not only anonymous, but also refuses to talk about security concerns regarding the paid server component.
His/her behaviour was openly rude on GitHub and seemingly also on Teamspeak.
When talking to other people involved it was rather obvious that the author doesn't want to speak about certain questions.
Since there's only an anonymous author and no real people or company involved in this - the security risks for the software is much too big to use it productively.
The software/server component would be able to control everything within the remote networks including direct port forwarding to any outside services. Seeing that Rustdesk is an unprofessional and anonymous one man show with a rather strange behaviour to user requests I would definetely advise against using it for now.
That's false, on 2 counts:
it was never more open-sourced than it is now, the fully-featured server is not open-source, but there is a minimal server that is open-sourced, so yes you can self-host and run the whole thing on your own if you are worried about security, you won't have all the features or security of the fully-featured server but you won't depend on their servers.
the guy didn't delete the messages, he doesn't speak english well (seems to be a chinese dev). You can crawl the github issues to see the past questions. People asked the dev to open-source the server, but the dev doesn't want to since this is the only source of income to fund future development and maintenance of the software. But he released an open-source minimal server for anyone to use or fork and further develop. Lots of well respected open-source softwares have free "community editions" versus paid pro versions (but closed source). This business model is nothing shady, the guy could have kept everything closed source, he's the dev, he can do whatever he wants.
I would love to see the fully-featured server being open-sourced too, but you can't accuse the dev of being shady just because they don't want to. There is a minimal server, please feel free to develop it further to reproduce all features and release it for free for everyone's benefit.
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Where can I download the minimum version of the server?
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It's not minimal. It's demo that support only one relay connection and without NAT and encryption. So it's not usable. Just as demo within closed LAN.
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For reference, the mentioned demo server can be found here: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk-server-demo
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Maybe things have changed since your comment. I just discovered the software and it's fully open source, both the client and the server.
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Adding to above, server software here: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk-server/releases
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This negative rating is no longer valid. Can that be reflected somehow?
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It works better than Anydesk (my experience) and it has so clean UI. Thw worst thing about Anydesk and TeamViewer was that I could not understand if the connection failed. So I'd keep on going, realizing later that the screen was frozen. Sometimes this caused it later to execute everything I had done when it unfroze and that could mess up stuff. But Rust just has the "Show quality monitor" option and now I see if it is frozzen and the delay that helps to immediately identify well, the delay. I really like it.
easy to use unlike teamviewer (popOs - android). Love it!
Easy as pie to install and works much better than Anydesk or Teamviewer, that I'm leaving behind. I'll try the server soon.
Free and Opensource !