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Share Links
Since 1.21.0.
A share link lets someone connect to one device with nothing but a browser: no account, no RustDesk install. They open the link, the built-in web client starts, and the person at the device accepts the connection in RustDesk's own accept window. It suits showing your own screen to people behind strict firewalls or meeting software that shares screens badly: the link only needs the console's HTTPS port.
Contributed by frankhommers (#142).
On a device's page, or with Share screen in the device list, click New share link and choose:
- For whom: a label. It shows in the list, the console log and the device's accept window.
- Valid for: 15 minutes, 1 hour (the default), 8 hours, 24 hours or 7 days.
- Viewers at the same time: 1 to 10 (default 1).
The link is shown once. Only a hash of it is stored, so a lost link means a new one. Creating and ending links needs Manage on devices. Creating, opening and ending a link all go in the console log.
End stops a link. Open share pages notice within half a minute and disconnect. A link also stops working when it expires, when the device is deleted, or when the person who made it is disabled or loses access to the device.
The viewer connects without a password, so the device opens its accept window, which shows the link's label. The person there accepts or refuses, and can turn off keyboard, clipboard, file transfer and the rest there, as for any incoming connection. Share links are for devices someone is sitting at.
The device must allow accepting by click: in RustDesk, Settings → Security → Accept sessions via click or via both. A device that only accepts passwords never shows the request. The share card warns when a strategy sets the device to password only, and the viewer's page says what may be wrong after 45 seconds of waiting.
With approved devices only on, the viewer is no
approved device, so the page gets a ticket for hbbs that names the shared
device. hbbs admits it for that device only, so a link can't be used to reach
any other device. Each ticket lives 5 minutes and the open page fetches a new
one every 30 seconds, so an ended link stops new connections within 5 minutes
even from a page that ignores the end signal. This needs CortenDesk Server
1.5.0, which the Docker image includes. With an older external hbbs, share
links work in open mode only.
- The viewer limit counts open share pages. Each RustDesk session is still accepted or refused at the device.
- A browser that ignores the end signal keeps its session until the person at the device disconnects it, which they can do from RustDesk's connection window at any time.
- The viewer sees the device's RustDesk ID, as in any web client session. Connecting to it outside the link still needs the device's password or someone to accept.
- Share viewers get your STUN servers but not your TURN servers, whose credentials are fixed and would outlive the link. Without a direct path the session uses the relay.
Set CORTENDESK_SHARE_LINKS=false. The card and the Share screen buttons
disappear and /s returns 404.
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