How To Raspberry Pi 3 GUI Remotely On Laptop/Desktop

A step-by-step guide on running Raspberry Pi GUI remotely on your desktop or laptop.

Ever since I wrote my blog on connecting Raspberry Pi with putty, which you can find here (if you didn’t read my previous blog) I was poured in with one particular question in lots of different ways. The question was through Putty I demonstrated that accessing Raspberry Pi terminal is possible, so is there any other technology or software exist through which the user can access the entire GUI (graphical user interface) of the Raspberry Pi, well after spending sometime with couple of software and testing those software on Raspberry Pi and on my laptop simultaneously I came to the conclusion that YES it is possible to run Raspberry Pi GUI remotely on your desktop and laptop.

In this guide I will show you how to log on to the Raspberry Pi from your desktop or a laptop and have the GUI show up in a very nice fashion on your desktop or a laptop.

So, without any further ado, get ready to learn another technology driven tool to make your interaction with Raspberry Pi easier than ever before.

Lets first start with installing software on Raspberry Pi, the software which i’m gonna use to make things work is “tightvncserver”. You’ll must be wondering what this tightvnc is? Actually it is a cross-platform and most importantly open source remote desktop software application in laymen terms it allow end-users to control another computer’s screen remotely and it’s free too.

So, after this small introduction lets involve some command, first of all go to the terminal (the so called black screen) of your Raspberry Pi and type:

“sudo apt-get install tightvnc”

For better understanding please see the image below. As you can see in the image it is asking after this operation, this much disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] so just type yes into it.

After installing you have to run in for the first time so for that just type “tightvncserver” which you can see in the image below.

As you can see on the above image, it is asking you to set a password to access your desktops so just give a password which most importantly you can remember and which is not easy to forget just like your father or mother name and if you are not single like me you can set password as your girlfriend’s name.

One more important question it will ask is setting up of administrative password whose answer will be yes or no depending upon the one who use the Raspberry Pi if you are the sole user say no if anyone else also use your Pi say yes and set the password. Which you can see on the image below:

One thing which I need to tell you is this that the setting up of password you only gonna do it once that’s it, and you might be confuse that the password you have setup is it will be consider as your respective Raspberry Pi password, the answer is no actually this is just a password that you use for VNC server to come in and allow someone to connect to it, in short I have created sort of a graphical user interface password.

Now after setting up the password it’s time to set the screen resolution, please type this command:

vncserver :1 -geometry 1920 x 1080 -depth 24 -dpi 96

This can be seen in the image below:

Now, this fires up the tncserver on your Raspberry Pi. While it is running just go to your laptop or desktop to download another software named “tncviewer” you can download the software from here. But hey I’m not gonna leave you in the middle, I’ll show you each and every step to install tncviewer software into your laptop or desktop too. So let’s get started.

Once you reach the link which I mentioned above for downloading the software, the page will look like this:

Just click on either of the installer according to your laptop or desktop configuration.

Step 1: Just click on next

Step 2: Accept the license agreement and click on next

Step 3: Choose setup type and select complete as your setup type

Step 4

Then another dialog box name select additional task will appear, just click next do not try to do anything fancy:

Step 5

Now, just click on install.

Step 6

Here come my favorite step this step is same as the steps which I mentioned earlier in this tutorial for putting password to your Raspberry Pi, for simplicity sake put the same password which you had putted for Raspberry Pi and again if you using a desktop or laptop which is being used by multi user then you should put the administrative password too.

Step 7

Click on finish.

After finishing installation just fire up tncviewer, then you’ll see this screen first.

Now one important thing to care about is what you gonna put inside remote host block. Actually inside remote host block you should put IP address of your Raspberry Pi you can use “ifconfig” to know your Raspberry Pi IP address, if you using LAN connection just grasp the IP address mentioned in “lo” beside inet or if you are using wireless connection like me just grasp the IP address mentioned in “wlan0” beside inet. Which you can see in the image below:

Now 192.168.1.2 is the IP address of my Raspberry Pi and :1 is the screen I’m using for display, after putting all these information click on connect.

Step 8: Putting the password

Let me clear you one thing: this is not asking for password which you setup on your Raspberry Pi it is asking for the password which you just setup on your laptop and desktop just few steps ago.

After you put the password you’ll see your Raspberry Pi GUI on your laptop or desktop. Let me show you how my setup is looking after I put the password at the required place.

Boom boom! So after following all the steps you’ll have the GUI on your laptop and desktop just like I have. Please do have a look over the image above.

But now lets me show you without the HDMI display screen. I’ll only use Raspberry Pi and power cable to power it and with the use of tncviewer I will be able to use the GUI of Raspberry Pi, which you can see in the image below.

So, this images proves it if you follow my above mentioned steps then you will able to get the GUI of the Raspberry Pi on your laptop or desktop.

Conclusions

So, this is it now a very important note which I have to share with all of you, that if you were able to achieve the same what I intent the fellow readers should achieve after reading this tutorial. Readers you all deserve a chilled beer or wine or orange juice but if you are a foody like me go and eat some burger or pizza which ever suits you because you deserve it. Cheers!