Creating a customised Windows MSI installer for RealVNC Viewer

This article is on how to create a customised MSI for the RealVNC Viewer.  If you are looking for the same information on how to create a customised installer for the RealVNC Server, please go here.

While in most cases we recommend that you configure RealVNC Viewer separately to installing it, for example by using Group Policy, there may be scenarios where you want to include parameters as part of the RealVNC Server installer. This can be achieved by following the below steps.

1. To create a customised installer on Windows, you will need to download the MSI installers for RealVNC Server and Microsoft's Orca tool.
   • The MSI installers for RealVNC Viewer are available for download from the RealVNC website.
   • Orca is available from Microsoft as part of the Windows SDK. Once you have downloaded and installed the Windows SDK, you can copy the Orca.msi installer file to another location for future use.
2. Extract the RealVNC Viewer MSI installers from the compressed folder and make a note of their location.
3. Once you have installed Orca, launch it from your Start Menu.
4. Click Tools on the top menu, then click Options.
   
   
   
   
5. Click the Database tab, and place a check mark in the checkbox to enable "Copy embedded streams during 'Save As'", then click OK.
   
   
   
   
6. Click the Open button in the top left.
   
   
   
   
7. Navigate to where you saved the MSI installers in step 2, and select the MSI installer you want to customise, then click Open.
   Note that there are separate MSI installers for 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows.
   
   
   
   

8. Click Registry on the list of tables on the left.
   
   
   
   

9. Right click in the right hand pane and click Add Row.
   
   
   
   

10. The values to complete depend on the setting you want to change.  For example, to set the RealVNC Viewer to always record the session these values would be set.  

    
    To enforce the value via policy:
    Registry: SessionRecordAllSessions
    Root: 1
    Key: Software\Policies\RealVNC\vncviewer
    Name: SessionRecordAllSessions
    Value: TRUE
    Component_: ComponentViewer
    
    To set the value as a default:
    Registry: SessionRecordAllSessions
    Root: 1
    Key: Software\RealVNC\vncviewer
    Name: SessionRecordAllSessions
    Value: TRUE
    Component_: ComponentServer

     

    For other settings, change the Registry, Name and Value values as appropriate. Please refer to RealVNC Viewer Parameter Reference.
11. Repeat step 10 for each parameter that you want to set.
12. Once you have added all of the rows/settings click File, Save As, to generate an MSI that will include your parameters upon install.