droidVNC-NG

droidVNC-NG

This is an Android VNC server using contemporary Android 7+ APIs. It therefore does not require root access. In reverence to the venerable droid-VNC-server it is called droidVNC-NG.

If you have a general question, it's best to ask in the community chat. If your concern is about a bug or feature request instead, please use the issue tracker.

Features

• View your Android device remotely with optional screen scaling for better performance.
• Remote-control your Android device with mouse and keyboard (for keyboard Latin-1 charset plus some special keys, supporting any kind of UI widget on Android 14 and newer, on older devices into EditText widgets only). To enable this, you need to activate the AccessibilityService for the app on your device.
• Copy text from a VNC viewer and paste it to your Android device. Server-to-client copy & paste works automatically for text selected in editable text fields or manually by sharing text to droidVNC-NG via Android's Share-To functionality.
• Use keyboard shortcuts to trigger 'Recent Apps' overview, Home, Back, Power, and volume controls.
• Magnify/zoom the screen with Ctrl plus scroll wheel.
• Transfer files between an Android device and computer using TightVNC viewer for Windows version 1.3.x.
• Secure your connection with a password. Note that setting a password is mandatory in case you want to access the server using MacOS's built-in Screen Sharing app.
• Choose a custom port for the VNC server.
• Start the server automatically when your Android device boots. On Android 11 and newer this also works with kiosk-mode launchers and lock task mode.
• Connect from your Android device to a listening VNC viewer without opening ports on your router.
• Connect to a UltraVNC-style Mode-2 repeater for remote access through a mediator server.
• Pre-configure default settings via a JSON file or Mobile Device Management.
• Discover your device automatically on the local network via Zeroconf/Bonjour.
• See individual mouse pointers for each connected client on your device.
• Control your Android device directly from any web browser using the built-in noVNC client — no separate VNC viewer required.

How to use

Keyboard Shortcuts From a VNC Viewer

• Ctrl-Shift-Esc triggers 'Recent Apps' overview
• Home/Pos1 acts as Home button
• End acts as Power button
• Escape acts as Back button
• Ctrl-Alt-PageUp increases audio volume
• Ctrl-Alt-PageDown decreases audio volume

Within a Local Area Network

1. Install the app from either marketplace.
2. Get it all the permissions required.
3. Set a good password and consider turning the Start on Boot off.
4. Connect to your local Wi-Fi. For accepting a connection your device should be connected to some Local Area Network that you can control, normally it is a router.
5. Click Start and connect to your device.

From The Internet

Disclaimer: Anything else than password exchange is currently not encrypted, so use at your own risk!

If you want to accept incoming connections from VNC viewers:

1. You should allow Port Forwarding in your router's Firewall settings. Either find a UPnP supported app to open ports dynamically or log in to your router's settings (usually open 192.168.1.1 in your browser, some routers have password written on them).

2. Find Port Forwarding, usually it's somewhere in Network - Firewall - Port Forwards.

3. Create a new rule, this is an example from OpenWRT firmware.

   Name: VNC forwarding

   Protocol: TCP

   Source zone: wan may be "internet", "modem", something that suggests the external source.

   External port: 5900 by default or whatever you specified in the app.

   Destination zone: lan something that suggests local network.

   Internal IP address: your device's local IP address, leaving any is less secure. The device's address may change over time! You can look it up in your routers' connected clients info.

   Internal port: same as external port.

4. Apply the settings, sometimes it requires rebooting a router.

5. Figure out your public address i.e. https://www.hashemian.com/whoami/.

6. Use this address and port from above to connect to your device.

Reverse VNC

Here's how to connect to a listening VNC viewer or repeater without opening a server port:

1. Leave the VNC port blank, which will get the Admin Panel to state the server isn't listening for incoming connections.
2. Make outbound connections by choosing either "Connect to a listening viewer" or "Connect to a repeater".
3. Optionally fill Max. reconnect tries. If you leave it empty, the default is 0 (no reconnect). Connections started from the Intent Interface can set EXTRA_RECONNECT_TRIES instead.

How to Pre-seed Preferences

DroidVNC-NG can be supplied with defaults for preferences that apply if preferences were not changed by the user.

See the Preseed Preferences Docs for more details.

Remote Control via the Intent Interface

droidVNC-NG features a remote control interface by means of Intents. This allows starting the VNC server from other apps or on certain events. It is designed to be working with automation apps like MacroDroid, Automate or Tasker as well as to be called from code.

See the Intent Interface Docs for more details.

Building

• After cloning the repo, make sure you have the required git submodules set up via git submodule update --init.
• Then simply build via Android Studio or gradlew.

Contributing

Contributions to the project are very welcome and encouraged! They can come in many forms. You can:

• Submit a feature request or bug report as an issue.
• Provide info for issues that require feedback.
• Add features or fix bugs via pull requests. Please note there's a list of issues where contributions are especially welcome. Also, please adhere to the contribution guidelines.

Notes

• Requires at least Android 7.

• Since Android 10, the permission to access the screen contents has to be given on each start and is not saved. You can, however, work around this by installing adb (or simply Android Studio) on a PC, connecting the device running droidVNC-NG to that PC and running adb shell cmd appops set net.christianbeier.droidvnc_ng PROJECT_MEDIA allow once. Alternatively, if using the intent interface, you can also start with net.christianbeier.droidvnc_ng.EXTRA_FALLBACK_SCREEN_CAPTURE set to true.

• You can also use adb to manually give input permission prior to app start via adb shell settings put secure enabled_accessibility_services net.christianbeier.droidvnc_ng/.InputService:$(adb shell settings get secure enabled_accessibility_services).

• If you are getting a black screen in a connected VNC viewer despite having given all permissions, it might be that your device does not support Android's MediaProjection API correctly. To find out, you can try screen recording with another app, ScreenRecorder. If it fails as well, your device most likely does not support screen recording via MediaProjection. This is known to be the case for Android-x86.

• In case you happen to have a board with an Ethernet interface and experience strange hangs during a VNC session, setting the interface to a slower speed might help. This workaround can be applied with mii-tool, for instance.

• If you see a a floating button similar to this on your screen after enabling accessibility, make sure you have the "shortcut" option in accessibility settings turned to off.

• Due to limitations in Android API, secondary displays are not supported.

• On some Android TVs, mouse input is not routed through. This seems to be an OS issue caused by the manufacturer's build config. You can still navigate the TV user interface via a VNC viewer by using cursor keys and Enter.

• Starting with Android 16, app components can opt-out of of accepting input from AccessibilityService, so these will not be getting input from droidVNC-NG.

• On Android 7 to 9, typing text into text fields with active autocomplete, most notably the Google search box, may come out in the wrong order, e.g. typing hallo yields ollah. This is an issue in the respective apps in combination with remote input and only occurs on these Android versions.