Install DuoDesk and it gives that machine a number. Type the number on any other computer and you are sitting at it — screen, mouse, keyboard, files. Windows, macOS and Linux, and nothing to configure on the router.
Four steps, and the third one is the important one: nothing happens on the far computer until somebody there agrees, or until you supply the password they set.
Everything below is in the app today, on all three platforms. A few of them need a paid plan; the matrix under Plans says which.
Mouse, keyboard, scroll, modifiers and Ctrl+Alt+Del. Coordinates travel as fractions of the picture, so a 4K desktop driven from a laptop still lands on the right button.
Every screen on the remote machine is listed; switching swaps the video track in place, with no reconnection and no gap.
Set a password and the machine answers by itself — the server room, the shop till, the parent's laptop that nobody can talk through a dialog.
A six-digit authenticator code on top of the password, checked on the remote machine itself.
Both directions, checksummed, straight down the same encrypted connection. Incoming files land in Downloads and nowhere else.
Copy on one machine, paste on the other. Off with one checkbox if you would rather it did not.
Blank the remote display while you work, so nobody standing next to it can watch. The blind is excluded from the capture itself.
Record what you see to a video file, on your own machine, with no extra load on the far end.
An address book of the machines you use, with reconnect tokens so you are not typing a password every morning.
Who connected, when, from which ID and how it ended — kept on your computer, not on ours.
Peer to peer over your own network or across the internet; a relay only when both ends are behind a NAT that refuses anything else. The app tells you which one you got.
The app checks a release feed, tells you what changed, and installs when you press the button — or at an hour you choose.
A bug, an idea, or a question, sent straight from a form in the app. Only what you type is sent — nothing from your screen and no file is ever attached.
Remote-access tools have been around for twenty years and their users have been very clear about what goes wrong. These are the four things that come up again and again — on Trustpilot, on G2, on every support forum — and what DuoDesk does about each.
| The recurring complaint | What DuoDesk does |
|---|---|
| "It got used to scam my mother." Remote tools are the standard instrument of fake-support fraud. | The accept dialog names the caller, defaults to Reject, counts down to a refusal rather than an acceptance, and shows a plain warning the first time an unknown ID calls. You can also lock the machine to a list of IDs, so an unknown one never even rings. |
| "I could not cancel, and I was billed for another year." Billing and cancellation dominate the one-star reviews of the big incumbent. | You install it and it works, with no account and nothing to cancel. A paid plan is optional: it runs by the month or the year, it stops when you stop paying for it, and what happens then is that the app goes back to Free — not that it locks. |
| "The free version keeps deciding I am a commercial user." Sessions cut off mid-work by a licence heuristic. | No heuristics and no timer, commercial or not. What Free gives you is written down — one session at a time and files up to 100 MB — and it is the same on the thousandth session as on the first. |
| "It lags and the connection drops." | Direct peer-to-peer whenever the network allows, hardware-encoded video, and a status line that says the resolution, frame rate, bitrate, round trip and whether you ended up relayed — so a slow session is diagnosable instead of mysterious. |
DuoDesk is free to use and stays that way — no trial, no timer, no heuristic deciding you look commercial. A paid plan lifts the limits and unlocks the features below. Prices are per user, and every machine you sign into gets what you paid for.
Features follow the plan of the person connecting. When you connect to a computer, what you may do in that session comes from your plan — the privacy screen, a second display, sound, recording, sharp quality and the file size limit — whatever plan the machine at the other end is on, and whether or not anybody there has an account at all. The one thing a machine pays for itself is how many people may connect to it at once. So one subscription covers every computer you look after.
€0 — every install, signed in or not.
File transfer up to 100 MB, one session at a time, and every safety feature on the page above. Nothing expires.
from €4.99/month — or €49.90 a year.
Multiple displays, sound, recording, sharp quality, files up to 8 GB and three sessions at once.
from €9.99/month — or €99.90 a year.
Everything in Pro, plus the privacy screen — blank the screen you are working on, wherever it is — and as many sessions at a time as you need.
| What you get | Free | Pro | Business |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remote control, clipboard, two-factor, unattended access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| File transfer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Largest file | 100 MB | 8 GB | 8 GB |
| Sessions at once (the machine being connected to) | 1 | 3 | unlimited |
| Multiple displays | — | Yes | Yes |
| Sharp quality | — | Yes | Yes |
| Remote sound | — | Yes | Yes |
| Session recording | — | Yes | Yes |
| Privacy screen | — | — | Yes |
Redeem a code. If somebody has given you a DuoDesk code, type it into the app under Account → Plan. A code worth the whole price is granted on the spot and asks for no card at all. Paid plans are billed by Stripe on a page Stripe hosts, run monthly or yearly, keep working to the end of the period you paid for, and drop back to Free when they end — nothing is locked and nothing you made goes away.
Install it on both computers — the one you want to reach and the one you will be sitting at. Same app, both roles.
Windows 10/11. One click, no wizard, no admin password — it opens itself when it is done, and updates from inside afterwards.
DownloadApple silicon. Signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens on a double-click. Needs Screen Recording and Accessibility.
DownloadDirect APK — allow "install from unknown sources" once. Updates itself from inside the app afterwards.
DownloadAppImage. chmod +x it once, run it, and it updates itself from then on. Capture needs X11 or a Wayland portal.
DownloadBuilt from the same source on a Mac. Not on the App Store yet, so it is a TestFlight or a local install for now.
Coming soonBoth Windows downloads are code-signed as Torcip SRL, with a trusted timestamp. Windows may still show the blue “Windows protected your PC” box, and Edge may say the file is “not commonly downloaded”. That is SmartScreen's reputation check, not a finding about the file: a signing identity this new has not had enough downloads yet for Windows to recognise it, which is earned over weeks. The warning fades on its own.
Click More info. It should read Publisher: Torcip SRL — then Run anyway. If it says anything else, or says unknown publisher, do not run the file.
Prefer to check before clicking anything? Right-click the file →
Properties → Digital Signatures: one signature,
Torcip SRL, timestamped. And every build's SHA-256 is in
versions.json and under each
card's version history — the row shows the first twelve characters
and copies the whole digest when you click it; the file keeps its
version in its name, so compare it with
Get-FileHash .\DuoDesk-Setup-*.exe in PowerShell. Know
what that proves: the checksum and the file come from the same
server, so a match says the download arrived intact, not that
nobody changed both. What vouches for the file is the Torcip SRL
signature above. The app goes further before it runs an update: it
checks the release feed's own Ed25519 signature, made with a key
that is not on this server, and only then the checksum inside it.
Almost never. The two computers exchange a handshake through the rendezvous server and then talk directly. Only when both ends sit behind a NAT that refuses direct traffic does the video get relayed, and the app says relayed in the status line when that happens.
Not because it is unsigned. Both Windows files are code-signed as Torcip SRL and timestamped, and right-click → Properties → Digital Signatures shows exactly that. What is missing is reputation: SmartScreen keeps warning about files from a publisher it has not seen downloaded many times, and that is earned over weeks rather than bought. So for now the blue box may still appear — but More info names Torcip SRL instead of an unknown publisher, and Run anyway is there. The download section walks through the dialog, and every build's SHA-256 is still published so you can verify the file yourself.
No. The dmg is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple, so it opens the way any other app does. macOS will still ask you to grant Screen Recording and Accessibility by hand in System Settings — that is a permission, not a warning, and DuoDesk cannot show or control a screen without it.
No — and that is deliberate. The ID is bound to a key generated on that machine, which is what stops anybody else from claiming it. A machine is reached by its sixteen digits and nothing else: there is no short name to dial it by, because a name is short and guessable, and one sitting in front of an unguessable number would be exactly the way in that the number exists to close. If the digits are awkward to read out, copy them straight from the Home screen.
An ID can be dialled by anybody who has it, so what matters is not how many machines fit but how far apart two addresses are. At sixteen digits a blind guess against a million registered machines lands about once in nine billion tries, which stops scanning being a strategy rather than merely making it slow. IDs issued when they were nine digits long have been retired: a copy still holding one is given a sixteen-digit ID the next time it connects.
They can make your computer ask you a question. That is all. Without somebody pressing Accept, or the unattended password, there is no session. You can also switch the machine to a fixed list of allowed IDs and everything else is refused before anything appears on screen.
No. DuoDesk uses the same hole-punching every video call uses, and falls back to a relay when that fails.
Yes, and you never have to buy it. Everything the app does today works on the free plan except the ones listed under Plans — a second display, sound, recording, sharp quality and the privacy screen — and the free plan caps a file at 100 MB and a machine at one session at a time. Which plan applies to a session is yours, not the far machine's, so you do not need an account on the computer you are connecting to. There is no trial that ends, no nag, and a plan that runs out puts the app back on Free rather than locking it.
Every version published here is listed in versions.json, which is also the feed the app itself reads. Publishing a build is the same act as announcing it.
DuoDesk is still in development and not yet ready for general use. There is nothing to get in touch about just yet — please check back later.
Questions, a bug, a machine that will not behave — write in. A proper form is coming; for now it is a plain mailbox and a person reading it.