Fast, free, open-source remote desktop and remote support. Give someone your 9-digit ID and one-time password and they can see and control your screen, or do the same to theirs. No account, no subscription, no telemetry. MIT licensed.
Slipstream is built for IT firms and people who are tired of paying for TeamViewer: use the free Slipstream Public service straight away, or run your own station (a folder on ordinary PHP web hosting) that hands out apps preconfigured for your organisation, keeps its own device directory and relays traffic when a direct connection isn't possible.
| Controlling another computer | Meetings, with Subspace chat and reactions |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| You want to… | Get |
|---|---|
| Get or give help right now | The app for your system from the latest release, or from public.slipstreamremote.com. It connects through Slipstream Public. |
| Run your own private service | slipstream-station.zip from the latest release, then follow the station setup guide. |
| Install apps for your clients | Your station's own download page: those apps connect to your station by themselves. |
Every release lists its changes in the changelog. Desktop apps only install updates signed with the project's release key; stations check the same signature before installing anything.
- TeamViewer-style access — short numeric IDs, one-time passwords that rotate after every session, optional permanent password for unattended access.
- Scam protection — on Slipstream Public (and on any station that asks for it), a link made with the one-time password waits until the person at the computer presses Allow, beside a plain warning about phone scams. Unattended passwords never ask.
- End-to-end encrypted — every link is QUIC/TLS 1.3 between the two devices. Remote-session passwords are verified with SPAKE2, so they never cross the network and can't be brute-forced offline — not even by the server.
- Peer-to-peer and fast — direct connections through NAT hole punching, with a relay fallback. H.264 video, encoded on the graphics card where there is one (NVIDIA NVENC; AMD and Intel through VA-API on Linux) and on the processor otherwise, and drawn on the GPU; a frame-ack pacing loop keeps latency low instead of letting frames queue up.
- Full control — mouse, wheel, keyboard (physical keys, works across layouts), Ctrl+Alt+Del and other special keys, multi-monitor switching.
- Support tools — connect to discovered TCP services through a workstation, export reviewed diagnostic reports, send LAN wake packets, compare DNS and gateway/station checks, and show the user a plain-language support status.
- Cloned-device detection — locally hashed desktop hardware evidence gives an imaged machine a fresh identity when it starts on different hardware, while retaining station and unattended settings. Run the updated master/service before imaging. Firmware UUID/serial identifiers take priority; Linux can fall back to permanent built-in PCI network adapters. Missing or duplicated evidence limits detection. See imaging.
- Several workstations at once — group tabs in the console or floating windows, drag them between groups or tear them out without reconnecting. Each group's + opens recent or station-saved/shared devices in that window.
- Group meetings and Show me — authorized clients join an organizer-hosted room with voice, camera, chosen-screen sharing and Subspace chat. Calls ring as an Incoming Transmission; the room gets its own tab, with speaker and gallery layouts (double-click anyone to fill the stage), chat reactions, and recording to MP4 or MKV at the size and quality you choose. Android's rear camera can show equipment to a technician. The default room size is 20; usable video capacity depends on the organizer's upload connection. See the meeting guide.
- Remote management — restart a saved computer (normally, into Safe Mode with Networking, or into its BIOS setup), wake it through another Slipstream computer on its network, and open its management controller (Supermicro or other BMCs, iDRAC, iLO, Intel vPro) for a BIOS-level console and power control, without exposing the controller to the internet.
- Chat without connecting — message the person at a saved workstation from the Bridge without seeing their screen. Each workstation gets its own tab in the Subspace chat panel, and Connect turns a chat into a full session in place, keeping the conversation.
- Clipboard sync, chat, and a two-pane file manager — copy and paste text and files between the computers, browse both, send and receive folders, or drag files from your desktop straight onto the remote screen.
- Technician sign-in — keep your list of devices (with their passwords encrypted in the app before station storage) on your station, and sign in to several stations at once, other organisations' too. Private stations automatically add workstations to the shared list; passwords are still required to connect. Station admins sign in to the web console with their own technician credentials, filter and export the device list, group, assign or remove several workstations at once and inspect full last-reported System information, including motherboard identification.
- System information — the remote computer's hardware, manufacturer serial number (when available), drives, temperatures and network, live, plus peripherals, printers/scanners and network drives.
- Subspace Relay — put a computer online through an Android phone's mobile data: the phone starts its own Wi-Fi network, and everything the computer sends goes through Slipstream on the phone as the phone's own data (check your carrier's terms). See the guide.
- Sound from the remote computer, when you want it.
- Unattended Windows servers — the Slipstream service hosts from boot, with support for UAC prompts, administrator windows and the login screen.
- Privacy mode blacks out the remote screen while you work, and port forwarding reaches services on the remote network (its Remote Desktop, a router's admin page).
- Network scan discovers devices and open TCP ports on the remote computer's IPv4 network or a manually entered subnet/VLAN, with device names, LCARS table/topology views, and its own movable desktop window.
- Quality presets — Balanced, Speed, Quality, Low bandwidth; automatic bitrate adaptation.
- Runs in the tray, starts with the system, stays reachable.
- Stations and apps update themselves — stations install new signed releases from GitHub (automatically, or with one click on the admin page), and the desktop apps then offer Install & restart, keeping their settings. Windows app updates also update an installed service. The Android app downloads, verifies and installs its updates too (Android asks you to confirm).
- Works immediately, with self-hosting available — raw downloads use
public.slipstreamremote.com. A configured self-hosted station stays the default; shared tabs above Your ID and Establish link switch both panels between that station and Slipstream Public. Link to my organisation on Bridge connects an app to a station by its address or setup code. - Your own station — an IT firm or company runs one self-contained web folder: a download page with apps preconfigured for it, a private directory of its clients' devices, its own relay and an admin page. Works on ordinary PHP web hosting (Virtualmin, cPanel, …).
- A starship-console interface. 🖖
| Share screen (host) | Control others (viewer) | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linux — Wayland (KDE, GNOME, wlroots) | desktop portal + PipeWire | ✅ | tested (KDE) |
| Linux — X11 | MIT-SHM + XTest | ✅ | tested |
| Windows 10/11 | DXGI + SendInput | ✅ | tested |
| Windows 7 SP1 / 8.x | GDI + SendInput (same download) | ✅ | tested |
| macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon and Intel) | ScreenCaptureKit + CGEvent (grant Screen Recording + Accessibility) | ✅ | one universal app, built on GitHub's Macs; tested |
| Android 8+ | MediaProjection + accessibility (on-device approval) | touch viewer | tested |
The portable Linux app is a single x86_64 file targeting glibc 2.31+ (Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.04 and newer), with no optional capture libraries required at runtime. The older Debian-server startup check remains open. See status for platform verification and limits.
- Download and open the app on both computers (Windows 7 SP1 to 11, macOS
12+, Linux, Android 8+). No installer and no account are needed. On a
Mac, move it to Applications and choose Open Anyway the first time
(it isn't notarised by Apple yet). On Linux, browsers don't keep the
executable permission: tick Properties → Allow executing as program
(or run
chmod +xon it) before opening it. - On the computer that needs help, the BRIDGE page shows Your ID and a one-time password.
- On the other computer, enter them under Establish link and press Engage. On Slipstream Public, the person being helped presses Allow.
For computers nobody sits at, set an unattended password under Config; it connects without a prompt. On Windows, the optional Slipstream service also reaches the login screen and administrator prompts. The getting started guide covers installing, unattended access, the support tools and troubleshooting.
Beware of scams. Nobody from a bank, Microsoft, Apple or "tech support" will phone you out of the blue and ask you to install a remote-access app. Only share your ID and password with someone you know.
slipstream # the app
slipstream --connect 482913077 --password … # connect straight away
slipstream --minimized # start in the tray
slipstream host [--password …] # headless host (servers, kiosks)
slipstream connect <ID> --password … # headless test connection with stats
slipstream set-server support.example.com --key … # configure without the GUI
slipstream set-password <password> # unattended-access password
slipstream info # show ID, station and settings path
slipstream update # install the newest build from your stationSLIPSTREAM_HOME=/some/dir keeps settings and identity elsewhere (handy for
running two instances on one machine).
| Station setup | Step by step: your own station from a release, on ordinary web hosting |
| Getting started | Installing clients, connecting, unattended access, support tools, troubleshooting |
| Running a station | Station reference: requirements, updates, data, relay, access control, Nginx, standalone server |
| Meetings and Show me | Calls, admission, devices, screen previews and mobile camera sharing |
| Building and releasing | Toolchain, release builds, publishing releases |
| Architecture | Networking, authentication, protocol, platform backends |
| Status | What's verified, known gaps, next steps |
| Open issues | The work queue |
| Code signing policy | What is signed, by whom, and privacy |
| Changelog | What's in each version |
scripts/check.sh cargo build --release --locked
scripts/check.sh # workspace tests, with resource/cache limits
scripts/build-station.sh # portable Linux + Windows (+ Android) builds, ready to uploadBuild dependencies, cross-compiling and the release checklist are in docs/BUILDING.md. Contributions are welcome: open an issue first for larger changes.
See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — networking, the auth protocol, the latency control loop and the platform backends.
- Saved-password vault keys the station never sees (before 1.0)
- Remote management against real BMC/vPro controllers and Wake-on-LAN through a gateway
- Hardware encoding: Media Foundation proven on real AMD and Intel Windows machines (it's opt-in until then), VideoToolbox on Macs, Android
- Android host audio/clipboard/files and self-updates
- Windows and macOS code signing
MIT — see LICENSE. Bundled fonts (Antonio, Barlow Semi Condensed,
Share Tech Mono) are under the SIL Open Font License 1.1; see
apps/slipstream/assets/fonts/.