RDP Connections

Conduit offers a full-featured Remote Desktop experience powered by FreeRDP 3.x, with bidirectional clipboard, shared folders, dynamic display resize, and more.

Display & Resolution

Control the remote display resolution with several options:

• Resolution presets — Match window, 1920x1080, 1280x720, 1440x900, or enter a custom resolution.
• Dynamic resize — When the Conduit window or tab is resized, the remote desktop resolution updates in real time via the RDPEDISP display control channel.
• High DPI / Retina — Per-connection toggle that sends the physical pixel resolution along with DPI scale factors for crisp rendering on high-density displays.
• Frame rate — Choose between 30 and 60 FPS depending on your bandwidth and preference.
• Display Scale — A global slider (Settings → Sessions → RDP) that adjusts the effective RDP resolution from 50 % to 200 % in 5 % steps. Higher values produce bigger on-screen objects by sending fewer pixels; lower values make objects smaller by sending more pixels. The default is 100 % (standard auto behavior).

Clipboard

Bidirectional clipboard sync via the CLIPRDR channel. Text and files can be transferred between the local machine and remote desktop. Clipboard sync can be toggled on or off per connection entry.

Text

Copy text on the remote desktop and paste locally, or vice versa. Plain-text clipboard content is synced automatically in both directions.

File Transfer

Conduit supports bidirectional file clipboard transfer using the MS-RDPECLIP file stream protocol. Transfer individual files, multiple files, or entire directory structures between your local machine and the remote Windows desktop.

Local to Remote

Copy files on your local machine (Cmd+C in Finder on macOS, or Ctrl+C in Explorer on Windows), focus the RDP session, then paste with Ctrl+V or right-click and select Paste in the remote Windows desktop. Files transfer automatically.

Remote to Local

Copy files in the remote Windows Explorer (Ctrl+C). A download notification appears in the RDP session view showing the file names and total size. Click Download to transfer the files to your local clipboard, or click Dismiss to skip.

Progress Tracking

Both upload and download transfers display real-time progress bars showing the current file, bytes transferred, and total size.

• Multi-file support — Transfer multiple files at once, including nested directory structures. Folder hierarchy is preserved on transfer.
• Large file support — Files over 4 GB are supported via 64-bit offsets with chunked 256 KB transfers.

Shared Folders

Map local folders into the remote session as redirected drives. Each shared folder appears as a network drive inside the Windows session. Per-drive read-only enforcement lets you share reference material without risk of modification.

Audio

Sound routing options for each connection:

• Local playback — Audio from the remote session plays through your local speakers.
• Remote playback — Audio plays on the remote machine.
• Disabled — No audio is transmitted, reducing bandwidth usage.

Authentication

• NLA (Network Level Authentication) — Authenticate before the remote session starts for improved security.
• Certificate verification bypass — Option to skip TLS certificate verification for self-signed or untrusted certificates.
• Domain credentials — Specify a Windows domain alongside username and password.

Visual Quality

• Color depth — 32-bit, 24-bit, 16-bit, or 15-bit.
• Quality presets — Best, good, or low. Lower quality reduces bandwidth at the cost of visual fidelity.

Input

Full mouse and keyboard support:

• Mouse — Click, double-click, drag, scroll, and hover events are forwarded to the remote session.
• Keyboard — Key press and release events with full modifier support. Text input and special key combinations work as expected.
• Screenshot capture — Capture the remote desktop as PNG or JPEG with configurable quality and optional regional capture.

Advanced

• Bitmap caching — Cache bitmap tiles to reduce bandwidth on repeated screen regions.
• Server pointer rendering — Let the server render the mouse cursor for accurate pointer display.
• Hostname override — Override the hostname sent during connection for multi-homed servers or NLA edge cases.
• DNS resolution fallback — A dual-strategy hostname resolver that first tries the operating system's native dns.lookup and, if that fails, falls back to a direct dns.resolve4 query via c-ares. This is particularly useful in corporate Windows environments where the standard OS resolver may not return results for internal hostnames.

Open in External App

From the entry dashboard, click Open in External App to launch the RDP connection in your system's default Remote Desktop client. Conduit generates a temporary .rdp file with the entry's connection settings and opens it with the platform default handler (Microsoft Remote Desktop, etc.).

MCP Integration

AI agents connected via the MCP server can fully control RDP sessions. Available capabilities include:

• Take screenshots of the remote desktop.
• Click at specific coordinates (left, right, or double-click).
• Type text and send individual key presses.
• Move the mouse, drag between coordinates, and scroll.
• Resize the remote display resolution.
• Query current display dimensions.