RDPilot

RDPilot is a fast Avalonia RDP client backed by FreeRDP. It focuses on responsive remote desktop sessions, dynamic resolution, secure saved profiles, and a clean tabbed interface.

Windows is currently the only supported platform. Linux support is in progress.

Features

• Dynamic resolution when the client window changes size.
• Low-latency keyboard and mouse input with mouse-move coalescing.
• Multiple simultaneous RDP sessions through tabs.
• Saved connection profiles with passwords stored in the OS credential vault.
• Text clipboard sync between local and remote sessions.
• Per-connection and global quality settings for color depth, font smoothing, wallpaper, themes, animations, full-window drag, compression, bitmap cache, and connection type.

Install

Download the latest Windows installer from the GitHub Releases page:

https://github.com/ErnieBernie10/RDPilot/releases

The installer is per-user and installs to:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\RDPilot

After the winget package is accepted, installation will also be available with:

winget install RDPilot.RDPilot

On Arch Linux, RDPilot is currently available from the GitHub Release package:

curl -LO https://github.com/ErnieBernie10/RDPilot/releases/download/v0.2.0/rdpilot-0.2.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
sudo pacman -U rdpilot-0.2.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

AUR packaging is planned and will be available soon.

Usage

1. Add a saved connection from the sidebar.
2. Enter the remote PC, username, optional domain, and optional gateway settings.
3. Save the profile. Passwords are stored in the operating system credential store, not in the profile JSON.
4. Click Connect to open a new session tab.

Each Connect action opens a separate tab. Switching tabs keeps background sessions connected and routes input, resize, and clipboard updates only to the active session.

Data Storage

Saved connection metadata is stored per user:

• Windows: %APPDATA%/RDPilot.Client/connections.json
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/RDPilot.Client/connections.json
• Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/RDPilot.Client/connections.json, or ~/.config/RDPilot.Client/connections.json

Passwords are stored separately:

• Windows: Credential Manager
• macOS: Keychain
• Linux: Secret Service via secret-tool

Notes

• Clipboard redirection is text-only.
• Audio playback and device redirection are disabled.
• RDPGFX is disabled; RDPilot currently uses the classic GDI rendering path for resize stability.
• Console diagnostics include [PERF_NATIVE], [PERF_UI], [PERF_INPUT], and [CLIPRDR] logs.

Contributing

RDPilot contains two main projects:

• RDPilot.Client: .NET/Avalonia desktop client.
• RDPilot.Wrapper: native C wrapper around FreeRDP 3 APIs.

Windows Development

Requirements:

• .NET SDK 10.0 or newer
• CMake
• Visual Studio Build Tools with the MSVC C/C++ toolchain
• vcpkg
• Inno Setup 6 for installer builds

Prepare vcpkg dependencies:

scripts/setup-windows-vcpkg.ps1

Build and run:

scripts/run-windows.ps1

Build only:

scripts/build-windows.ps1

Build a Release installer:

scripts/build-installer-windows.ps1 -AppVersion 0.1.0

The installer is written to:

artifacts/installer/RDPilot-Setup-<version>-win-x64.exe

The default vcpkg location is a sibling of this repository, for example C:/Users/<you>/Sources/vcpkg when this repo is C:/Users/<you>/Sources/rdp-client. Pass -VcpkgRoot to use a different location.

Linux Development

Linux support is in progress. The notes below are for contributors working on Linux builds and are not a supported end-user installation path yet.

Requirements:

• .NET SDK 10.0 or newer
• CMake
• C compiler toolchain
• pkg-config
• FreeRDP 3 development packages: freerdp3, freerdp-client3, winpr3
• secret-tool and a working Secret Service session for password storage

On Arch/CachyOS:

sudo pacman -S dotnet-sdk cmake gcc pkgconf freerdp

Build and run:

scripts/run-linux.sh

Build only:

scripts/build-linux.sh

Build a Release configuration:

scripts/build-linux.sh --configuration Release

Equivalent direct commands:

dotnet build RDPilot.slnx
dotnet run --project RDPilot.Client/RDPilot.Client.csproj

The .NET project builds the native wrapper with CMake and copies the native library beside the managed output so DllImport("freerdp_wrapper") can load it. On Linux, the wrapper is built at RDPilot.Wrapper/build/native/libfreerdp_wrapper.so.

Release Process

Release versions use major.minor.patch tags. The tag version is used for the .NET assembly, Inno installer, GitHub Release asset name, and winget package version.

Create a release:

git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

The Windows Installer workflow publishes:

RDPilot-Setup-0.1.0-win-x64.exe
RDPilot-Setup-0.1.0-win-x64.exe.sha256

The Linux Arch Package workflow publishes:

rdpilot-0.1.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
rdpilot-0.1.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst.sha256
PKGBUILD
.SRCINFO

Copy the generated PKGBUILD and .SRCINFO into the rdpilot AUR repository for each release.

Submit or update winget manually with wingetcreate after testing the release installer.

New package:

wingetcreate new https://github.com/ErnieBernie10/RDPilot/releases/download/v0.1.0/RDPilot-Setup-0.1.0-win-x64.exe

Package values:

PackageIdentifier: RDPilot.RDPilot
PackageName: RDPilot
Publisher: RDPilot
PackageVersion: 0.1.0
PackageUrl: https://github.com/ErnieBernie10/RDPilot
PublisherUrl: https://github.com/ErnieBernie10/RDPilot
ShortDescription: Fast Avalonia RDP client backed by FreeRDP.
Moniker: rdpilot
InstallerType: inno
Scope: user
Architecture: x64

Update package:

wingetcreate update RDPilot.RDPilot --version 0.1.1 --urls https://github.com/ErnieBernie10/RDPilot/releases/download/v0.1.1/RDPilot-Setup-0.1.1-win-x64.exe