Files and clipboard

Copy text between your machine and a remote one, and transfer files in both directions over the same encrypted peer-to-peer session.

A remote session carries more than pixels. Clipboard contents and file transfers travel on their own channels inside the same encrypted peer-to-peer connection — they do not take a detour through the server.

Clipboard

Copy on one side, paste on the other. Text, formatted text and images move in both directions while the session is open. With auto-sync on, what you copy follows you without a click; the clipboard buttons on the session toolbar send or fetch it on demand.

The clipboard is shared while the session lasts

Anything you copy on either machine becomes available to the other. Be aware of it before copying a password on the machine you are controlling from.

Clipboard sync can be turned off per session if you would rather it did not follow you.

File transfer

Drag a file onto the session window to send it to the remote machine, or use the session toolbar’s transfer panel to pull one back.

Resumable — a transfer that is interrupted picks up where it stopped rather than starting again.

Direct — bytes ride the same peer-to-peer channel as the video, so the server never holds the file.

Both directions — send and retrieve within one session.

Progress is shown per transfer, and a transfer continues while you keep working in the session.

What the far end sees

Files land in the Downloads folder of the person signed in at the remote machine’s screen, unless its owner chose another folder (the desktop app’s Incoming files card). A file with the same name as one already there gets a numbered copy instead of replacing it.

Nobody at the screen

On a machine whose agent runs as a system service, with nobody signed in at the screen, a file lands in the service’s own folder instead. On Linux, a file sent while someone is signed in at the screen belongs to them, exactly as if they had saved it themselves.

When you want a file path rather than a session

For scripted or repeated movement of files, a session is the wrong tool. Two better options:

SFTP over Roomler SSH

— scp and sftp work against a node with no sshd running. Transfers run as the session’s own account, not as the daemon.

Tunnels

— forward a file service’s port and use whatever client you already have.

Limits worth knowing

A file is not a clipboard item. Copying a file object in the remote file manager does not carry the file — drag it, or use the transfer panel.
An image copied on a Linux machine under Wayland waits to be fetched. A Windows host notices copied images by itself, and so does a Linux desktop on X11 with a per-user install (from agent 0.4.148) and a Mac (from agent 0.4.154); elsewhere text still follows you automatically, and the clipboard button brings an image across.
A Linux machine whose agent runs as a system service outside any desktop session has no clipboard to share. Its clipboard buttons stay greyed, with the reason in their tooltip.
A Mac sends the computer’s sound from agent 0.4.161. An older Mac sends none, which surprises people expecting a full session mirror; the receive-audio toggle says so.
The Ctrl+Alt+Del button reaches the Windows lock screen only where Windows allows it. A Windows machine that runs Roomler as a service, and whose “software Secure Attention Sequence” policy lets services send it, gets the real Ctrl+Alt+Del: it reaches the lock and sign-in screens. Elsewhere the button types the three keys. Those reach the programs on the desktop but not the lock or sign-in screen, and the button’s tooltip says which condition is missing. On Linux the desktop decides what the keys do: GNOME and KDE offer to log out. A Mac gives the keys no meaning, so the button is not shown there.
SFTP against a Windows target runs as the session’s account. On a Windows machine that runs Roomler as a service, a session set to the person signed in at the console transfers files as that person: the transfer starts in their home folder, and an upload belongs to them.