How do I disable Wayland to use RealVNC Connect?

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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

  1. Locate the configuration file for your OS: /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
  2. Open the file with sudo/root privileges
  3. 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
      
  4. Reboot the RealVNC Server computer

RHEL/CentOS

  1. Locate the configuration file for your OS: /etc/gdm/custom.conf
  2. Open the file with sudo/root privileges
  3. 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
      
  4. Reboot the RealVNC Server computer

Raspberry Pi OS

  1. Open Terminal on the Pi, or connect to it using SSH
  2. Run the command: sudo raspi-config
  3. Select Advanced Options, then select Wayland
  4. Select X11 and confirm
  5. Reboot the Pi when prompted
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  • 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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