Free Remote Desktop Sharing Applications

17 Jun

Remote desktop sharing applications are the ones which sometimes save the day of a developer (specially the freelancers) or anyone who works with computers.

Working as a distributed team and need desktop collaboration?
Supporting a remote web application that you had built?
Need to manage the work computer from home?

There are great free remote desktop applications which helps to build this remote connection.

Do you think these applications may save your day, don’t forget to bookmark this post (del.icio.us link).

I have collected the best ones I know & experienced. Here they are:

LogMeIn

Free version works like a charm, you can manage multiple remote computers. This is a web-based application and you only have to install clients to the PCs to be managed. Downside of the free version is you can not transfer files.

TeamViewer

TeamViewer is a software and both PCs need to install applications. You can control remote PCs (unlimited) with the free version. You can transfer files, chat, establish a VPN connection & more.

Yuuguu

This is a very different one. Besides controlling remote computers, Yuuguu enables a team of up to 30 people to share their desktops and chat.

DimDim

Dimdim is a free web conferencing service where you can share your desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam with absolutely no download required for attendees. It also has an opensource version.

Mikogo

With Mikogo, users can host smooth-running screen sharing sessions and invite up to 10 participants simultaneously to any one Mikogo meeting. It is genuine freeware with no costs and there are no installations on the participants’ side (thanks Andrew for the suggestion).

TightVNC

TightVNC is a very famous open source remote desktop management application. It is lightweight and has versions for both Windows and Unix.

Conclusion

All the applications are very easy to use and has lots of users. Except TightVNC, all of them are firewall friendly, which will probably not cause any problems while connecting. But only TightVNC is a standalone product that does not require any registration or depend on any web-based service (and DimDim opensource).

If there are any other free remote desktop sharing solutions that you know, please share them to make the list better.

Tags: Desktop PC
Filed under: Extras, Other License, Tools

15 Responses for "Free Remote Desktop Sharing Applications"

aaaa June 17th, 2008 at 10:45 am
beware of the security risks ! if you enable such a software to have remote access to your desktop, potentially anyone can use this to peek at your computer.

kolorex June 17th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Hi, greetings from Argentina, i will translate this article an pit it on my blog, i hope you don’t mind. I will link to here as original.
And i think that you miss MSN messenger, with the Share apps and share desktop will work fine to this. And Remote desktop coneccion, but that works only for a LAN i think.
See’ya!

wrd June 17th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
@kolorex,

You can translate it for sure, a link back will be ok.

I thought about putting MSN meseenger too but in my cases it never performed well. It was hard to connect and slow.

D4rKr0W June 17th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
What about mRemote?
http://www.mremote.org
It’s even open source!

Steve June 19th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Ultra VNC is good in it’s own right but it’s SingleClick app is good for when you need to get around Firewall port forwarding etc.

You configure and compile the app yourself and can even apply your company Logo.

Steve June 19th, 2008 at 12:05 am
er… sorry I assumed the “URI” field was for my link … wasn’t thinking:

http://www.uvnc.com/addons/index.html

Danhbaweb20.com June 20th, 2008 at 1:20 am
LogMeIn no 1. Thanks

shahid June 25th, 2008 at 9:18 am
skyfx is a pretty decent one for remote control and helping other without them having to install any software. http://skyfex.com/quickstart.php

jennel159 July 7th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Greetings from Germany
I’m using Teamviewer for Desktop-Sharing. It’s easy to handle and I never had problems with it. The Software is free for private people.

Andre van den Heijkant July 24th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Hi,

I am looking for a posibility to share not the complete desktop but only 1 application (incl all windows). Do you no a solution for that?

wrd July 24th, 2008 at 9:14 am
@Andre,

I’m not sure if this is possible with such an application.

But maybe you can create a Windows user with such rights and users can connect through this applications & that Windows user.

Andrew Donnelly July 25th, 2008 at 4:11 am
Hi Andre,

Try Mikogo (http://www.mikogo.com) which is mentioned in the list above.
Before you start a free online meeting (or even during a meeting) you can access the feature called “application selection”. There you can choose which applications you wish to share and which ones you would prefer to keep hidden from the view of your meeting participants.
Say for example you have 5 windows open: a couple of web browsers, a Word doc, a PDF and your email client. But you only want to show the PDF for a presentation. Then you deselect the other windows, and your meeting participants will only be able to see the PDF, keeping everything else hidden. You can also select to hide the taskbar for greater privacy.

For further details take a look at our user guide (http://www.mikogo.com/download/MikogoUserGuide.pdf) on pages 10 and 11 which gives detail on how to access this feature.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to join the Mikogo Forum, or drop me a line at the email address below. Or leave another comment here (I hope that is ok with you, wrd….?)

I hope that helps you.

All the best,

Andrew
The Mikogo Team
andrew(at)mikogo.com

Jeff July 29th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Microsoft has released a program that will do this as well. it’s called SharedView and seems to work very much like Mikogo. you can choose what to share at any time during the meeting, you can also provide hand-outs, which is nice.

Mikogo requires that you type in the meeting code manually or speak to the meeting attendee’s to give them the code, where SharedView allows the option of copy/paste, or with a single click sending a pre-formatted email with the meeting code and password links included.

it’s likely Mikogo will have the same thing soon…

Henq August 4th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I got another one http://www.ntrconnect.com which works the same as logmein. There is a free and pro version (see https://www.ntrconnect.com/web/features.asp). Still logmein stays my favorite.

Alex Ferri August 7th, 2008 at 7:32 am
I am the developer of a software called ScreenCamera. With ScreenCamera you can share your computer desktop using any free video chatting program or web site including Live Messenger, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Messenger, PalTalk, Camfrog, AIM, Stickam, AnyWebcam, etc..

Actually, with ScreenCamera you can share your desktop screen and webcam at the same time using any free video chatting program or web site.

To download ScreenCamera go to:
http://www.pcwinsoft.com/screencamera/

Regards,
Alex Ferri
PCWinSoft Systems Ltd