Remote desktop
Open a streamed desktop from a session, take control, choose what to capture, fit or zoom the view, paste into the guest, and tune quality.
When a session runs on a machine with a graphical desktop, you can stream that whole desktop into a tile and use it like you are sitting in front of it: move the mouse, type, and run real apps. The desktop appears next to your terminals, so a build log and the window it produced live side by side.
Open a remote desktop from a session
Open the Remote Desktop control on the session toolbar. taiku adds a desktop tile to your layout and connects to the machine's screen. The tile behaves like any other: drag it, split it beside a terminal, or maximize it while you work.
The control appears whenever the session's machine can stream a desktop, which includes cloud dev machines with a graphical desktop and the wide range of apps and operating systems shown in the apps and desktops showcase. If a machine has more than one screen, you can switch which one you are viewing from the tile.
Choose what to stream
On a host that supports capture targets, open the monitor button on the desktop tile to choose exactly what is sent:
- Entire screen streams one monitor. If the host has several, choose the one you need.
- Window streams one app window and keeps the rest of the desktop out of the picture.
- Browser tab streams one tab from a supported Chromium-based browser.
Every target stays interactive. If you minimize a selected window or tab, its stream pauses until you restore it.
Take or transfer control
One viewer controls a remote desktop at a time. Press Start when the desktop is idle, or Take over when another window or device is already controlling it. The host's access guard determines whether the connection waits for approval, asks for a password, or starts automatically.
If another viewer has control, your tile shows View only or Spectator mode. This is a status view: your input is ignored and the other viewer's live video is not mirrored into this tile. Choose Take over to transfer both the stream and control to your window without ending the remote desktop session.
Fit the whole screen, or zoom in
By default the tile fits the entire remote screen into the space you give it, so you always see the whole desktop no matter how small the tile is. That is the mode you want for getting your bearings or watching along.
When you need to read small text or click something precisely, zoom in to see the desktop closer to its native pixels. On a computer, use the quarter-screen grid button to jump into one corner, or scroll to zoom and drag to pan. On a phone or tablet, pinch to zoom and drag with two fingers to move around. Reset the zoom to drop back to the fitted view that shows everything at once.
Copy text into the desktop
Your local clipboard reaches into the remote machine, so you can copy a command, a URL, or a token on your own computer and paste it straight into an app on the streamed desktop.
On a computer, click into the desktop tile and paste with Cmd+V (macOS) or
Ctrl+V (Windows / Linux); the text lands in whatever app has focus on the
remote machine. On a phone or tablet, open the on-canvas menu and tap Paste.
The same menu has a Copy action that pulls the current selection on the
remote desktop back onto your local clipboard, so text moves both directions.
Tune quality and latency
The desktop stream trades sharpness against smoothness, and the right balance depends on your connection. Open the Stream quality menu on the tile to adjust three things:
- Frame rate raises or lowers how many frames per second you receive. Higher is smoother for motion; lower saves bandwidth.
- Target bitrate sets how much data the stream aims to use. A higher bitrate looks crisper; a lower one holds up better on a slow or shaky link and cuts lag.
- Codec picks the video codec used to encode the stream.
These are your preferences as a viewer. The machine you are watching clamps them to its own limits and to what your browser can decode, so if you ask for more than either side can deliver, taiku settles on the best it can do. If the picture looks soft or the mouse feels laggy, lower the bitrate and frame rate first; raise them back up on a fast connection when you want detail. Your choices are saved, and you can also set the defaults under Remote desktop in Settings.
Reconnect after a drop
If your network hiccups, the tile shows Reconnecting to the desktop and restores the stream on its own once the connection returns, without you starting over. Your control state and zoom come back with it.
If a tile gets stuck on Connecting and never shows a picture, use Reset on the tile to tear down the stalled session and request a fresh one in one step. That is the escape hatch for a session that never fully came up, rather than a connection that merely dropped.
Cross-OS input notes
Streaming a desktop reaches across operating systems, and two known cases are worth keeping in mind:
- Windows: taps and clicks map to the right spot only after the tile has sized itself to the host display. Give the stream a moment to show its first frame and settle before you rely on precise clicks; once the picture is up, clicks land where you expect.
- Linux Wayland: input into some native windows is a no-op, so keystrokes or clicks aimed at those windows do nothing. If you control a Linux desktop and find a window that will not accept input, use an X11 or XWayland session, where input is delivered reliably.