A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CGNAT | Carrier-Grade NAT |
| NAT | Network Address Translation |
| VNC | Virtual Network Computing for remote desktop access |
[Thread #19 for this comm, first seen 18th Jun 2026, 18:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Has anybody tried DWService? It looks promising, and if you don't shoot me down I'll try it to help my mother with her constant printer issues.
Not trying to stir the pot here, but to my understanding, the DWService agent is opensource, but the server side isn't. If I am errant in my conclusion, feel free to school me.
I've used it to control my headless Windows server back when I was into self harm.
DWService is great! Never had issues with it. Try it on your own machine to play around and see if it works for your usecaze.
No love for VNC here?
The remote user can even download & run a reverse VNC which connects back to the helper.
Cross-platform...
I'm also a big VNC fan, but I imagine RustDesk is solving for CGNAT better? I'm not aware of anything in VNC that solves CGNAT being a PITA.
VNC still works.
RustDesk. It works like TeamViewer: install the client on both machines, have the relative read out the client ID and one-time password over the phone, and you can connect immediately. It has self-hostable server components, but you can use the public relay servers without having to configure anything on the clients. You don't have to open any ports on the firewall either.
Thanks for the quick response, this looks perfect for what we need. Appreciate it very much!!!
If RustDesk doesn't do what you need, Remotely worked great for me and helping a few family members (though probably a bit more features than you may need).
nomachine is an alternative
For your usecase, I would recommend Rustdesk.
But I would also like to mention Meshcentral. Meshcentral is a hosted application that lets you remotely manage multiple devices. It's different from meshcentral in that it maintains a constant connection, and you can do things like view files, run administrator CMD commands, in addition to being able to remotely connect and control the computer at any time.
It's more designed for managing a small enterprise environment, than individual support like OP is doing. The constant connection is designed to be a cheap, open source alternative to Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions that do something similar. It is invasive though, since it is essentially a backdoor you put in the computer, whereas rustdesk is temporary, and only works when you have it open and are actively connected and using it. That's why rustdesk is more suitable for individual support than meshcentral is.
Although I wouldn't recommend it for OP, I'm leaving this up for anyone in the future who might be searching for "remote tech support" or similar, and maybe they will find Meshcentral more appropriate.
I need something like this, but for my mother's malware filled phone...
Unfortunately, there isn't really a good solution for remote controlling android or ios devices. Meshcentral can view, but not act. Also, the user must initiate the connection from their end.
I was investigating this (for android tablets), and the solution I came too was to enable android debug tools (adb) over wireless (but in this case, remotely), vpn the phone into a remote server to connect them. Then, you should be able to run adb commands remotely (which lets you uninstall apps). And then over adb, you should be able to stream the screen and control it via genscrcpy.
Actually, the first solution I was going to use was device farmer: https://github.com/orgs/DeviceFarmer/repositories , but the above is basically how device farmer works.
I eventually gave up on remote controllung android devices because it wasn't needed and it would have been a complex deployment.
A simpler solution for your usecase is probably to spend a night cleaning up her phone, and then enable kiddie mode on it. That would disable app installs unless she calls you to approve it. In addition to that, (idk about ios), but you can actually install apps on android devices remotely via the google play website.
Thanks! I have to clean her phone every few months, so I might try the child mode thing.
It does seem like RustDesk is the best for my case. Thanks for taking the time to reply, and thank you for the extra info about Meshcentral. Hopefully it helps someone in the future!
Rustdesk is what I use for tech support for my family. By default it uses the rustdesk official server for the handshake and holepunching or whatever, but you can also selfhost your own if you want to.
But I want to migrate to some kind of hardware web kvm like nanokvm, cause sometimes their pc doesn't boot and walking them through bios settings over a shaky videocall is a nightmare.
a software
'Software' is not a word that get an 'a' article. So
I was hoping there exists software that
or
I was hoping there exists a software package that
Having said that, you can install UltraVNC and have it 'call home'; and it works very well.
Your dialect of English is not the only one