Frequently asked questions

What is Roomler?

Roomler is three products on one agent: a browser-based remote desktop, a private WireGuard-style mesh network between your machines, and team chat with video calls. You install one agent per machine and use everything from a browser tab. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and you can host the whole thing yourself.

Do I need to install anything to view a remote screen?

No. The viewing side is a plain Chromium browser with nothing installed. Only the machine you are reaching runs an agent.

Can Roomler see my screen or my keystrokes?

No. Remote-desktop video and input travel directly between your browser and the machine, encrypted end to end. When no direct path exists the traffic falls back through a relay, and the relay forwards ciphertext it cannot read. The pixel stream is never recorded.

The one exception is video conferencing: a call’s media passes through the server, because a multi-party call needs a forwarding unit. No other feature works that way.

Is it free?

There is a free plan covering three devices, with the private network, remote desktop, tunnels, chat and calls all included. Paid plans raise the device count and add features like exit nodes. Self-hosting has no device limit imposed by us.

Can I host it myself?

Yes, and it is a first-class path rather than a stripped-down one. One compose file and a published container image; the documented clean-machine path takes about 88 seconds. Nothing is held back from a self-hosted deployment. See self-hosting.

How is this different from Tailscale?

Tailscale is a better mesh network — more years, more platforms, more polish in that lane. Roomler’s difference is that the same agent is also a remote desktop and an SSH server, so you are not running two agents, two control planes and two audit trails on every machine. See Roomler vs Tailscale.

How is this different from RustDesk or TeamViewer?

RustDesk is a mature open-source remote desktop, and TeamViewer has two decades of polish. Neither also gives you a private network: with Roomler the machine you just connected to is already reachable by address and name, so a port forward or an SSH session needs no second product. See Roomler vs RustDesk and Roomler vs TeamViewer.

Does it work behind a corporate firewall?

Usually, yes. Agents need only outbound access and never an inbound port. With every UDP path blocked the mesh still runs over TLS on port 443, so connectivity is never all-or-nothing — the connection quality degrades rather than failing.

Do I need to open ports or forward anything on my router?

No. Both ends connect outbound and meet in the middle. The only inbound port anywhere is on a machine you deliberately configure to relay other machines’ traffic.

Why is my session slow?

Almost always because the two ends fell back to a relay. Run roomler peers or check the session’s connection indicator — if it says Relay, that is the answer, and the most common cause is a VPN client on one end capturing the local network range. See cannot connect.

Why is the remote screen black, or just wallpaper?

Almost always a capture permission, not a network problem — and operating systems report no error when one is missing. On macOS, wallpaper-only means the Screen Recording grant. On Windows, freezing at the lock screen means the agent is not in system service mode. See black screen.

Can I reach a machine that nobody is logged into?

On Windows and Linux, yes. Windows needs the system service mode, which can reach the lock screen and the pre-logon desktop; Linux headless machines use a virtual display. macOS cannot: screen capture there requires a GUI login session, so a Mac must be logged in, though it may be locked.

Does the person at the machine have to approve?

By default, yes — and an absent setting means ask, not allow. You can set a device to unattended access, which is the right answer for your own servers and the wrong one for a colleague’s laptop. See consent.

Can I SSH to a machine without installing an SSH server?

Yes. Roomler serves SSH on a machine that runs no sshd, binds no port and needs no firewall rule, including on Windows. It is off by default behind four independent gates. See SSH.

Which browsers work?

Chat, calls and the dashboard work in current Chromium browsers, Firefox and Safari. The remote-desktop viewer targets Chromium, because it uses a low-latency decode path that avoids the roughly 80 ms buffering a normal video element enforces.

Can one machine be in two organizations?

Yes — one agent with several enrollments. Do not install a second copy of the agent: it would fight the first over the network adapter, the local socket and the routing state. Note that joining a second organization needs an agent restart. See multi-org.

What happens when I remove a device?

Its credential is revoked immediately, every other machine is told to forget it, and its mesh address returns to the pool for the next joiner. Re-enrolling the same machine gives it a new address, so anything pinned to the old one needs updating.

How do I know the software I downloaded is really yours?

Windows binaries are Authenticode-signed by G ROX LTD; Linux and macOS artifacts carry GPG signatures against a published key, plus build provenance. The auto-updater checks the signature and the publisher name, and refuses anything that fails either. See signed releases.

Is it open source?

Yes. The server is AGPL-3.0 and the agent that runs on your machines is MPL-2.0. The source is at github.com/gjovanov/roomler-ai.

Can it record remote sessions for compliance?

No, and this is deliberate rather than unimplemented. Recording a terminal or a desktop means shipping whatever an operator typed — passwords, credentials — off the machine. Session metadata is audited in detail; contents are not. If you need session recording, this is a genuine gap.

Where do I report a problem?

github.com/gjovanov/roomler-ai/issues. Include roomler status output — and for a connectivity problem, from both ends. Security issues should be reported privately; see SECURITY.md.

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