waylo

Remote access for GNOME workstations

waylo.
get back home.

Secure, unattended access to the GNOME workstation your work depends on. Return to the same applications, windows, and monitors from any modern browser—without starting a second desktop.

Install Waylo See how it works
  • Session-owner authentication
  • TLS by default
  • Built for SSH or VPN access

Operational continuity

Keep critical Linux workstations within reach.

Waylo helps developers, operators, and technical teams return to the exact GNOME environment their work depends on—wherever that workstation happens to be.

Preserve session continuity

Access the desktop that is already logged in, with its applications, windows, processes, and GPU acceleration intact. No duplicate environment to rebuild.

Reach unattended systems

A systemd user service keeps Waylo ready, while direct GNOME integration removes the local sharing prompt. Ideal for workstations in offices, labs, and remote sites.

Use standard client devices

No dedicated viewer or browser plug-in is required. Connect from a current laptop, phone, or tablet with keyboard, pointer, scrolling, touch, and on-screen keyboard support.

The complete working session comes with you.

clipboardaudiofile transferauto-reconnectquality controls

Multi-monitor workflows

Your entire workstation, not a single viewport.

Open each remote monitor in its own browser window, place it on the matching local display, and work fullscreen. Waylo remembers the arrangement for the next session.

A penguin in a Hawaiian shirt working at a four-monitor desk on a tropical beach, watched by a baffled sunbather.
Remote office
The same penguin running four screens from an economy airline seat, to the alarm of the other passengers.
Travel day
The penguin in a spacesuit, tethered to two monitors in orbit above Earth, with a small green alien nearby.
Very remote site
The penguin at a desk carved from ice in Antarctica, with a crowd of other penguins gathered to watch.
On-site support

Seamless control across displays

Move your pointer across both monitors.

waylo · DP-1
Sep 416:20
waylo · HDMI-2
Sep 416:20

The pointer crosses shared monitor edges just as it does at the physical workstation. Waylo renders it locally in the browser to keep interaction responsive. Active display: DP-1.

Architecture

Direct access to the session that matters.

Waylo works with GNOME’s compositor APIs to provide remote control without creating a parallel desktop.

Connect on a trusted path

Reach the workstation through an SSH tunnel or VPN. Waylo serves HTTPS and encrypted WebSockets by default.

Verify the session owner

Credentials are checked against the host’s OpenSSH service. Only the user who owns the active desktop session can connect.

Stream the live workspace

Mutter supplies the active desktop and receives input. Low-latency video returns to the browser as H.264 when available, with automatic MJPEG fallback.

Technical data path

Screen out: Mutter ScreenCast → PipeWire → GStreamer → H.264 (hardware-accelerated when available) → wss:// → WebCodecs. If H.264 is unavailable, Waylo falls back to MJPEG.

Input in: Browser events → wss:// → Mutter RemoteDesktop. The cursor is hidden in the video and rendered locally, so it does not trail behind your hand.

Purpose-built for GNOME

Designed around the live desktop, not a workaround.

Conventional remote-access tools often depend on assumptions that do not hold for an unattended GNOME workstation on Wayland.

VNC

Often a separate display

On Wayland, VNC may be unable to capture the active session or may create a virtual display without the real windows or GPU acceleration.

xrdp

Creates a second login session

xrdp starts another graphical session, which can conflict with the GNOME session already running on the workstation.

xdg-portal

Requires local approval

Portal-based sharing asks a local user to approve access and select a monitor, preventing reliable unattended operation.

Waylo’s answer: use Mutter’s own APIs to stream the active session—no virtual display, no second login, and no local approval step.

Deployment

Deploy Waylo in about two minutes.

Run the installer on the GNOME workstation as its normal desktop user—not with sudo.

$ wget -qO- https://waylo.site/install.sh | sh

Review install.sh before running it, or use the self-extracting archive below for controlled and offline deployments.

  • Detects your architecture
  • Verifies the download’s SHA256
  • Installs to ~/.local/share/waylo
  • Starts a systemd user service on port 8080
  • Asks before touching anything system-wide

Host requirements: GNOME on Wayland or Xorg, OpenSSH, and GStreamer; GNOME 45–48 is recommended. Current Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox support H.264 through WebCodecs, with MJPEG as the automatic fallback. Keep Waylo behind an SSH tunnel or VPN rather than exposing port 8080 to the public internet.

Downloads

Choose the deployment that fits.

Install the server on each GNOME workstation. The optional desktop client adds saved connections, certificate pinning, encrypted credential storage, and one-click multi-monitor sessions.

Waylo server

v0.4.16 · x86-64

Desktop client optional

v0.4.9

On Ubuntu, install the deb with sudo apt install ./waylo-desktop-latest-linux-amd64.deb. Ubuntu Software cannot open local debs from your home folder reliably.

Deploy and operate with confidence.

Use the quick start for a first connection, then review cold-boot auto-login, locked-screen capture, security, performance tuning, clipboard, audio, file transfer, and configuration options.

Read the docs
Waylo. Get back home. The name combines Wayland with lo, the loopback interface—a nod to returning securely to the workstation and session that are already yours.