Host screen for Paseo

A Paseo plugin that lets you see and control the screen of the Mac or Linux computer (or, experimentally, Windows PC) running your Paseo daemon, from any paired Paseo client: the desktop app, the web app or your phone. Think of a small TeamViewer that rides on the Paseo connection you already have, relay included, so there is no port forwarding, VPN, VNC or extra account.

It was built for the moments when an agent on a remote machine needs a human: watching a Playwright run, clicking through a permission dialog, or checking what is actually on screen.

Features

• Live view of the host's screen, sized to your viewer, at roughly 5 to 15 frames per second depending on the network.
• Mouse and keyboard control: click, double-click, right-click, drag, scroll and type. The host's own mouse, trackpad and keyboard keep working alongside it, and on desktop clients the host's pointer only follows yours once you click into the picture.
• A key bar for shortcuts your own computer keeps for itself: ⌘Tab, ⌘Space, ⌘W, ⌘Q, switching Spaces (⌃←/⌃→), Mission Control and App windows on a Mac host; Super+Tab, Activities, Apps, Ctrl+W, Alt+F4 and switching workspaces on a Linux host.
• Two-way text clipboard on desktop and web clients. ⌘V pastes your clipboard on the host, and ⌘C on the host copies back to you. With a Linux host, use Ctrl from a Windows or Linux client; a Mac client's ⌘ works there too.
• Multiple displays: each one is listed by name, the last choice is remembered, and a drag that leaves the picture continues onto the neighbouring display.
• Phones: tap to click, long-press to right-click, pinch to zoom, drag to pan, and a Rotate button that turns the picture sideways.
• Wakes the host's display when you open the viewer, and shows the lock screen if the host is locked so you can type your password to unlock it (except on GNOME Wayland, which stops sharing while locked).
• Pause remote control for the whole host from the pause button on its Screen row in Paseo's sidebar, or from any viewer. While paused, viewers can watch but not click, type or use the clipboard; the pause is kept across restarts until someone resumes it.
• A per-viewer View-only switch, and Fast / Balanced / Sharp quality presets.

Requirements

• A Mac host running macOS 14 or later, with the Xcode command line tools (xcode-select --install). The native helper is compiled with swiftc the first time it is used.
• Or a Linux host with a desktop session, either Wayland (GNOME, KDE and other desktops with xdg-desktop-portal's RemoteDesktop and ScreenCast portals) or X11, with a C compiler and the development packages for that session (see Install, step 3). The native helper is compiled with cc the first time it is used.
• Or, experimentally, a Windows 10 or 11 host. The native helper is compiled with the .NET Framework's csc.exe, which Windows includes, so nothing needs installing. Windows support has been tested on one Windows PC so far.
• Paseo 0.12 or later, with plugins enabled on the host.
• Any Paseo client paired with that host.

Install

1. Enable plugins on the host by setting "pluginsEnabled": true in ~/.paseo/config.json, then run paseo reload.

2. Install the plugin on the host from the Paseo plugin directory:

   paseo plugin add kevguy/screen
   # or straight from npm or GitHub
   paseo plugin add npm:@kevlai22/paseo-screen
   paseo plugin add git:kevguy/paseo-screen
   

3. Prepare the host:

   • Mac: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and turn on Paseo under both Screen Recording and Accessibility. Quit and reopen Paseo.

   • Linux on Wayland (the default on current Ubuntu, Fedora and GNOME): install a C compiler and the GLib, GStreamer and JPEG development packages, plus GStreamer's PipeWire plugin. The helper is compiled from source the first time the screen opens.

     # Debian or Ubuntu
     sudo apt install gcc pkg-config libglib2.0-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev libjpeg-dev gstreamer1.0-pipewire
     # Fedora
     sudo dnf install gcc pkgconf-pkg-config glib2-devel gstreamer1-devel gstreamer1-plugins-base-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel pipewire-gstreamer
     # Arch
     sudo pacman -S gcc pkgconf glib2 gstreamer gst-plugins-base libjpeg-turbo gst-plugin-pipewire
     

     Wayland only lets an app see the screen and send input after the desktop asks. The first time a viewer opens, the viewer offers Show prompt on host, and the desktop's screen sharing dialog appears on the host. Someone at the host has to answer it once:

     • turn on Allow Remote Interaction. It is off by default, and without it the screen can be watched but not controlled;
     • turn on Allow Clipboard Access for copy and paste between your devices;
     • choose Share.

     The choice is remembered, so later viewers start without asking. If remote interaction was left off, Show prompt on host asks again. While the screen is shared, the desktop shows its sharing indicator; stopping sharing there ends it, and it stays off until someone at the host approves the dialog again. A user has to be logged in to the desktop on the host.

   • Linux on X11: install a C compiler and the X11 and JPEG development packages. libxtst-dev is the one most desktops lack: it provides XTest, which the plugin uses to send mouse and keyboard input.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗