Is Wayland supported?
RealVNC Connect does not currently support Wayland on Linux. If you don't disable Wayland, when you connect to RealVNC Server on these OSes you will see a blank/blank screen or a message stating "Cannot currently show the desktop", or find you cannot connect until there is a user logged in on the remote computer. The RealVNC Server GUI may also fail to load.
Which Linux distributions use Wayland?
If you are using a version of Linux that uses Wayland by default, such as the below list of Linux distributions, you will need to disable it.
- Ubuntu 18.04 and later
- CentOS / RHEL 8 and later
- Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm (12)
How do I disable Wayland?
To disable Wayland, you need to follow the steps for your platform below.
Ubuntu
- Locate the configuration file for your OS: /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
- Open the file with sudo/root privileges
- Uncomment WaylandEnable=false by deleting the # at the beginning of the line
- Alternatively, run the below command, either in a Terminal/Console app or while connected to the remote computer with SSH:
sudo sed -i 's/^#.*WaylandEnable=.*/WaylandEnable=false/' /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
- Alternatively, run the below command, either in a Terminal/Console app or while connected to the remote computer with SSH:
- Reboot the RealVNC Server computer
RHEL/CentOS
- Locate the configuration file for your OS: /etc/gdm/custom.conf
- Open the file with sudo/root privileges
- Uncomment WaylandEnable=false by deleting the # at the beginning of the line
- Alternatively, run the below command, either in a Terminal/Console app or while connected to the remote computer with SSH:
sudo sed -i 's/^#.*WaylandEnable=.*/WaylandEnable=false/' /etc/gdm/custom.conf
- Alternatively, run the below command, either in a Terminal/Console app or while connected to the remote computer with SSH:
- Reboot the RealVNC Server computer
Raspberry Pi OS
- Open Terminal on the Pi, or connect to it using SSH
- Run the command:
sudo raspi-config
- Select Advanced Options, then select Wayland
- Select X11 and confirm
- Reboot the Pi when prompted
Comments
I made this account to say, thank you, this was -exactly- what I needed to find. this has been a bit of a headache for me. thanks for the simple guide.
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