Howdy Selfhosters!
A family member who does not live in my state recently got a new PC, and asked for my help in setting it up. Since it can’t be done in person, I’ll have to do this over the phone. Problem is, I don’t really want to walk them through all of the steps (download Firefox, ublock origin, uninstall W11 bloat, etc) over the phone. I was hoping there exists a software that I could host on my Linux machine (I am able to port forward/host externally if necessary), and instruct them over the phone to download the “other end” (client-side) of the software so that I can remote in and set their PC up myself.
I checked out the awesome-selfhosted list and found that most of the remote access softwares are mainly for SSH servers. I did check out Guacamole, but I’m not sure I understand how to utilize the software. Any help and suggestions are welcome. Thank you everyone!
For your usecase, I would recommend Rustdesk.
But I would also like to mention Meshcentral. Meshcentral is a hosted application that lets you remotely manage multiple devices. It’s different from meshcentral in that it maintains a constant connection, and you can do things like view files, run administrator CMD commands, in addition to being able to remotely connect and control the computer at any time.
It’s more designed for managing a small enterprise environment, than individual support like OP is doing. The constant connection is designed to be a cheap, open source alternative to Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions that do something similar. It is invasive though, since it is essentially a backdoor you put in the computer, whereas rustdesk is temporary, and only works when you have it open and are actively connected and using it. That’s why rustdesk is more suitable for individual support than meshcentral is.
Although I wouldn’t recommend it for OP, I’m leaving this up for anyone in the future who might be searching for “remote tech support” or similar, and maybe they will find Meshcentral more appropriate.
I need something like this, but for my mother’s malware filled phone…
Unfortunately, there isn’t really a good solution for remote controlling android or ios devices. Meshcentral can view, but not act. Also, the user must initiate the connection from their end.
I was investigating this (for android tablets), and the solution I came too was to enable android debug tools (adb) over wireless (but in this case, remotely), vpn the phone into a remote server to connect them. Then, you should be able to run adb commands remotely (which lets you uninstall apps). And then over adb, you should be able to stream the screen and control it via genscrcpy.
Actually, the first solution I was going to use was device farmer: https://github.com/orgs/DeviceFarmer/repositories , but the above is basically how device farmer works.
I eventually gave up on remote controllung android devices because it wasn’t needed and it would have been a complex deployment.
A simpler solution for your usecase is probably to spend a night cleaning up her phone, and then enable kiddie mode on it. That would disable app installs unless she calls you to approve it. In addition to that, (idk about ios), but you can actually install apps on android devices remotely via the google play website.
Thanks! I have to clean her phone every few months, so I might try the child mode thing.
It does seem like RustDesk is the best for my case. Thanks for taking the time to reply, and thank you for the extra info about Meshcentral. Hopefully it helps someone in the future!