How do I disable Wayland to use VNC Connect?

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VNC Connect does not currently support Wayland on Linux, so if you are using a version of Linux that uses Wayland by default (Ubuntu 18.04 and later, CentOS / RHEL 8 and later), you will need to disable it.

If you don't disable Wayland, when you connect to VNC 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 VNC Server GUI may also fail to load.

To disable Wayland, you need to:

  1. Locate the correct configuration file for your OS. This is one of /etc/gdm3/custom.conf (Ubuntu) or /etc/gdm/custom.conf (CentOS/RHEL)
  2. Open the file with sudo/root privileges
  3. Uncomment WaylandEnable=false by deleting the # at the beginning of the line
    1. Alternatively, run the below command
      sudo sed -i 's/^#.*WaylandEnable=.*/WaylandEnable=false/' /etc/gdm3/custom.conf #Ubuntu
      sudo sed -i 's/^#.*WaylandEnable=.*/WaylandEnable=false/' /etc/gdm/custom.conf #CentOS/RHEL
  4. Reboot the VNC Server computer
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3 comments
  • Is that a 'no' ?

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  • Is there a Wayland compatible version in plan or in work? Thank you.

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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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