Advanced and troubleshooting

PIN and owner, the tray icon, Preferences, quality on weak networks, remote access, the command line, troubleshooting and updates.

PIN, owner and admin

• Rotate (default): a new PIN after every successful pairing, so each PIN works once.
• Fixed: the PIN stays until you change it, AnyDesk style. Setting a PIN in the UI switches to Fixed.
• Owner: the first device that pairs. It gets Manage host in the app and web client: view and change the PIN and mode, change device roles, revoke devices, read the audit log. Other devices cannot do this. Re-pairing with the PIN always drops to the user role.
• Ask me before anyone connects: turned on at the host computer itself (tray menu or SwiftDesk window). When a non-owner device connects, the person at the host presses Accept or Decline in the SwiftDesk window; with no answer it is declined after 30 seconds. Approval is not done from the owner's app.
• Pause new connections: refuse new sessions, keep the open ones.
• Revoke from the tray, the SwiftDesk window, the owner app or the cloud: that device's live sessions end at once and it must enter the PIN again.
• Audit log: every pairing, connection, revocation, PIN change and received file goes to audit.log next to host.json.
• Brute-force protection: 5 failures from one IP lock it out for 60 seconds; 30 failures from any IP within 10 minutes lock pairing and rotate the PIN in Rotate mode.

Tray icon

On Windows the icon is blue when idle, green while someone is connected and grey with pause bars when paused. On a Mac the menu-bar icon is monochrome and follows the menu-bar colour: an outlined screen when idle, a filled screen while someone is connected, pause bars when paused. A notification appears whenever a device connects.

• Left-click: opens the SwiftDesk window: Your address and PIN at the top, then the This computer tab (connected now, paired devices, approvals, audit log), Connect to another computer and Preferences.
• Right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac): opens the menu, which shows Address and PIN; click either to copy.

Preferences

The Preferences tab in the SwiftDesk window has five groups: General, Security, Display & quality, Cloud and Updates. Most changes apply at once; the ones that need a restart are marked “restart required”. When SwiftDesk was started with command-line flags, the matching fields are locked, because flags always win.

• Advertise on the network: turn it off so this computer does not show up when others use Scan network.
• Use the native viewer (faster): use the native viewer when opening other SwiftDesk computers.
• Updates: channel, automatic checks, automatic install and roll back. See Updating.

Quality and weak networks

• Defaults: up to 60 fps, 8 Mbps ceiling, hardware encode. A static screen costs almost no bandwidth.
• The Quality button: Low 2 Mbps (weak 4G), Normal 8, High 20 (video). It is a ceiling; SwiftDesk still lowers it when the link cannot keep up.
• A new session starts at a moderate rate and climbs quickly to the ceiling when the network allows, so the first seconds do not choke the link.
• Below about 3.5 Mbps SwiftDesk drops to 75 % resolution, up to 45 fps; below 1.5 Mbps to 50 %, up to 30 fps. The floor is 500 kbps, where text stays readable.
• The client shows “Network limited: … kbps, 75 % resolution, 45 fps”. When the link recovers SwiftDesk steps back up, about one step every 5 seconds.
• Opus audio carries FEC, so it keeps playing through packet loss. If the picture stays broken, press Sharpen.
• Smoothest on 5 GHz Wi-Fi or Ethernet, and a direct Tailscale path (tailscale status does not say “relay”).

How SwiftDesk keeps the picture moving

• Congestion control: the client reports when each packet arrived; SwiftDesk estimates the real bandwidth and changes the bitrate on the next frame.
• FlexFEC and retransmission: repair packets follow the measured loss (zero on a clean link); lost packets are resent when the client asks.
• Per-frame rate control: SwiftDesk picks the compression for every frame, so typing costs very little and quality comes back once the screen is quiet.
• Lossless refinement: regions that stay still for about 200 ms are resent pixel-exact and drawn over the video.

Remote access and network scope

SwiftDesk is LAN and Tailscale first. It only accepts peers inside the chosen scope; others are refused before the PIN check:

To reach your home computer while away: install Tailscale on both devices with the same account and use the computer's Tailscale address. Do not expose port 7340 to the internet.

SwiftDesk Cloud (optional)

• Sign in with a passkey, or with a 6-digit code from an authenticator app (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, 1Password, Bitwarden…) plus single-use recovery codes. New accounts are by invitation only.
• See all your computers, change PINs and revoke devices remotely, invite family members.
• Sync your address book across devices, with passwords end-to-end encrypted by a sync passphrase.
• Computers on the same account can open each other without a PIN when you allow it in the dashboard; every such connection is logged on both computers.
• Relay the handshake when the two machines cannot see each other directly. Video and audio stay end-to-end encrypted between the two.

Command line

Under the hood SwiftDesk runs the swiftdesk-host binary; you rarely need it because Preferences covers these options. Common flags:

Troubleshooting

Updating

SwiftDesk checks for new versions every 6 hours (or when you click Check for updates…). Every update carries an Ed25519 signature and a SHA-256; anything that does not match is refused and written to the audit log. SwiftDesk never downgrades on its own.

• Windows: when a new version is out, click Update available in the tray menu; SwiftDesk installs silently and starts again. Or rerun the installer or the PowerShell line.
• macOS: SwiftDesk opens Installer and asks for your password; from 0.12.1 the permissions are kept.
• Android: install the new APK over the old one.
• The web client ships inside SwiftDesk: update that computer and the web client updates too.

In Preferences → Updates: pick the channel (stable or beta), turn automatic checks on or off (on by default) and automatic install (off by default; when on, SwiftDesk installs only while nobody is connected). On Windows, Roll back returns to the previous version.