Remote Desktop

Backbuild Remote Desktop lets you see and control a real machine from your browser. It comes in two forms that share one engine: remote access to your own machines that run the Backbuild desktop app, and on-demand cloud desktops you provision when you need them. The screen, mouse and keyboard, clipboard, file drag, and audio all travel over a single WebRTC connection with a hybrid post-quantum encryption overlay, so the media stream is protected against both today's attackers and a future quantum computer.

Remote access to your own machines is free on every plan, including Free. On-demand cloud desktops run on usage credits. See pricing.

Two Ways to Use It

After this section you will know which of the two surfaces fits your task. Both use the same Rust media stack and the same encrypted transport, so the viewer experience is the same. What differs is where the desktop runs and how it is paid for.

Surface	What it is	Cost
Your machines	Remote access to a Windows, macOS, or Linux computer of your own that runs the Backbuild desktop app and that you have enrolled as a trusted device.	Free on every plan.
Cloud desktops	A disposable Linux desktop you provision on demand, with a browser, an editor, and a display, viewed the same way.	Runs on usage credits.

You reach your machines from Remote Devices in the app. You reach a cloud desktop from a container or sandbox session. The rest of this page describes the engine both share, then the trust and permission model, then each surface in turn.

How the Connection Is Encrypted

After this section you will be able to answer, for a security review, exactly how the desktop stream is protected. The connection is built on WebRTC, the same peer-to-peer media technology browsers use for calls, so the video and input travel directly between the viewer and the host rather than through a relay whenever a direct path is available. WebRTC already encrypts media with DTLS and SRTP. Backbuild does not stop there.

A hybrid post-quantum handshake. Before any frame is sent, the two ends run a Noise-XX handshake that combines a classical key exchange, X25519, with a post-quantum one, ML-KEM-768, the mechanism standardized by NIST as FIPS 203. Combining the two means the session key stays secret even if either algorithm is later broken.
Hybrid signatures. Identities in the handshake are signed with both Ed25519 and ML-DSA-65 (FIPS 204), so authentication is post-quantum as well.
A per-frame encryption overlay. On top of DTLS and SRTP, every channel, the video, the audio, the input, and the file drag channel, carries its own ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption keyed from the handshake, with a distinct key per channel derived through HKDF-SHA-256. This means the transport-layer encryption is never the only thing protecting your session.
Rekeying and replay limits. Channel keys are rotated on a cadence and counter windows bound replay, so a long session does not lean on a single key.

The result is that a party who records the encrypted traffic today, hoping to decrypt it once quantum computers mature, cannot: the post-quantum layer keeps the harvested stream closed.

Device Trust and Permissions

After this section you will understand how a connection is authorized and what a viewer is allowed to do. Access to your own machines is governed by trust on first use. The first time a viewer and a host meet, the host shows a fingerprint that you confirm, and that public key is pinned. On every later connection the key is checked against the pinned value, and a mismatch, which is what a machine-in-the-middle would cause, is surfaced loudly rather than accepted silently.

Each trusted device carries a set of permissions you choose, and each is enforced on the host:

Permission	What it allows	Default
View screen	See what is on the host screen.	On
Control input	Move the mouse and type on the host.	On
Clipboard sync	Share clipboard text, images, and files between host and viewer.	On
Drag files in	Drag files from the viewer onto apps on the host.	On
Drag files out	Drag files from the host to the viewer. Marked high risk because the host could push files out through it, so it is off until you turn it on.	Off
Hoist windows	Pop a remote window out as a native local window on the viewer.	On
Audio	Stream the host's audio to the viewer.	Off

Because permissions live on the trust record for each device, you grant a machine exactly what it needs and no more, and you can revoke a device at any time from Remote Devices.

Remote Access to Your Own Machines

After this section you will be able to reach a computer of your own from the browser. Install the Backbuild desktop app on the machine you want to reach, sign in, and enroll it as a device. The desktop app runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and the capture engine has a native backend for each. The enrolled machine then appears in Remote Devices for you to connect to.

Install and enroll. Run the Backbuild desktop app on the host machine and register it as a device under your account.
Trust it once. On the first connection, confirm the fingerprint the host shows. The key is pinned for every connection after.
Connect from a browser. Open Remote Devices, pick the machine, and its screen renders in the browser. Nothing needs to be installed on the viewing side.
Work. View and control the machine, sync the clipboard, drag files across, hoist a single window out to your local desktop, and stream audio, each subject to the permissions you granted.

The media path is peer-to-peer, so the pixels flow between your two machines rather than through Backbuild whenever a direct route exists. This surface is included free on every plan.

On-Demand Cloud Desktops

After this section you will be able to open a cloud desktop and drive it the same way. When you do not have a machine of your own to reach, or you want a clean, disposable environment, provision a cloud desktop. It is a Linux desktop running in an isolated container, with a browser, an editor, and a virtual display, and you view and control it through the same encrypted WebRTC connection.

Cloud desktops are the desktop face of a Backbuild container session. They are isolated per session and per organization, they tear down cleanly, and they run on usage credits: larger sizes draw more credits while they run, and you stop paying when the session ends. The Sandbox Execution guide covers provisioning, sizes, session persistence, and the isolation model in full.

Because a cloud desktop is programmatically reachable, an AI agent can drive it directly through Backbuild's agent tools, opening pages, clicking, and typing, which makes it useful for automated browsing, testing, and any workflow where a real desktop needs to be driven without a person at the keyboard.

Governance and Isolation

After this section you will be able to answer how Remote Desktop fits your organization's security posture. Everything here inherits the platform's controls.

Per-organization isolation. Devices and cloud desktops belong to one organization, and a request that crosses the organization boundary is refused.
Role-based access. Who may enroll, connect, and manage devices is governed by roles and permissions, so access follows the same model as the rest of the workspace. See Roles & Permissions.
Trust pinning. A pinned host key means a substituted host is detected rather than silently trusted.
Audit logging. Device changes and connection events are recorded with the identity of the user who performed them.
Post-quantum media. The encryption overlay described above protects the stream against harvest-now, decrypt-later attacks.

What It Is Good For

Reaching your work machine from anywhere

Enroll your office or home computer once and open it from a browser on any other machine, with your files, apps, and clipboard, without carrying anything with you.

A clean, disposable environment

When you need a fresh desktop for a task, a demo, or untrusted software, provision a cloud desktop, use it, and tear it down, so nothing lingers.

Driving a desktop with automation

Point an AI agent or a test harness at a cloud desktop and let it operate a real browser and real applications, then collect the result.