Almost nobody looks for remote desktop software out of curiosity. Something sent you: a nag screen, a missing feature, a router you cannot configure, an account you do not want. This page is arranged by the thing that sent you, and it ends with the cases where ManyScreens is the wrong answer and something else is right.
This page describes your problem, not the other product. For side‑by‑side facts — each one linked to the vendor’s own page and dated — see the comparison, or the pages for TeamViewer, AnyDesk and Chrome Remote Desktop. What this page says about ManyScreens is exact, and you can check it against the security page and the connection check, which runs on your own network in about ten seconds once you have a free account.
ManyScreens has no commercial-use detection, no timer on sessions with your own computers and no popup asking you to upgrade. It records when a session starts and ends, so the service can be run, and draws no conclusions from that. The limits on Free are three things and they are all stated in advance: three computers, one screen at a time, and lower quality when a session has to go through the relay rather than connecting directly. Until 1 January 2027 even those are lifted for everyone, with no card.
With ManyScreens you install on one side only: the computer you want to reach. The side you watch from is a browser, so a work laptop under someone else's control, a friend's computer, a hotel machine, a phone or a tablet all work with nothing installed and nothing to sign into but your own account.
Open manyscreens.com in Safari, sign in, tap the computer. ManyScreens draws a touch interface for it: a switch between looking and controlling so nothing gets clicked by accident, pinch to zoom up to eight times, two fingers to scroll, press and hold for a right click, and a row of the keys a phone keyboard does not have. There is no ManyScreens app in the App Store yet, and you do not need one; for anyone who would rather have one, it is on the way.
ManyScreens needs an email address and a password. No Google account, no Apple ID, no Microsoft account, no browser extension, and no sign-in with anybody. The servers are in Germany and the site loads no analytics or trackers.
ManyScreens needs no port forwarding, no VPN and no static IP, and it works behind carrier-grade NAT. Both ends dial outward; WebRTC builds a direct path where one exists, and where none does the stream goes through a relay on port 443 like any web page. On a network that allows only web traffic it still connects, and if a proxy kills WebSockets the viewer switches to ordinary HTTPS requests by itself.
ManyScreens is a web page plus WebRTC on port 443, which is why it often passes where a dedicated remote-control client does not. Rather than take that on faith, sign in and run the connection check on the network in question: it uses the same servers a real session uses and tells you which routes it found.
ManyScreens Pro opens one browser window per remote monitor, so you can lay them out on your own desk the way they sit on the other one. Free shows one remote screen at a time with a menu to switch, and input always follows the screen you are on.
ManyScreens Pro plays the remote machine's own system audio. It is tested on macOS; on Windows and Linux it is not confirmed yet. It stays off until you ask for it and is sent only to the viewer who asked, so one person listening does not put an audio stream on everyone else's connection.
An optional ManyScreens service reaches the login window itself, before anyone has signed in. On a Mac it carries Apple's own Screen Sharing to your browser; on Linux it needs a machine with an X11 login screen. It is off until you switch it on, it asks for the administrator password to install, and guest codes can never reach it. On Windows it does not exist yet.
ManyScreens shows a code on the screen of the machine being shared. It lasts ten minutes, works exactly once, and the guest still has to be approved by whoever is sitting at that machine. They need no account. When it is over it is over — a guest code never turns into standing access.
ManyScreens Pro is €4.99 a month, or €39 a year, for unlimited computers. There is no per-seat and no per-technician pricing, because it is not built for a support desk. Free has no time limit and stays free.
ManyScreens is built for one person and their own computers, plus letting someone in once. Where that is not what you need, these are, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise.
| If you need | Look at |
|---|---|
| To run the whole thing on your own infrastructure, or read the source | RustDesk, MeshCentral, Apache Guacamole. ManyScreens is a hosted service and is not open source. |
| Gaming, or anything where controller latency is the point | Parsec, Moonlight with Sunshine. A browser WebRTC viewer will not match them and ManyScreens does not try. |
| To manage a fleet: technician seats, mass deployment, device groups, an admin console, an audit trail | TeamViewer, Splashtop, Atera, and the RMM tools generally. ManyScreens has none of that and is not heading there. |
| A native Mac or iPad app you buy once, with no subscription at all | Screens, Jump Desktop. ManyScreens is a subscription because it runs servers for you, though Free costs nothing and does not expire. |
| To reach a Windows machine's login screen or a UAC prompt | Something else, for now. ManyScreens reaches login windows on macOS and Linux X11 only. |
| Access to a Mac that is asleep, or behind FileVault's pre-boot screen | Wake-on-LAN hardware, or a Mac set never to sleep on power. No remote tool, ManyScreens included, can unlock FileVault before macOS has started. |
Install ManyScreens on the computer you want to reach, create an account in its window and click Share this computer. Switch on Start at login, and it lives in the menu bar or tray, comes back whenever you log in, and updates itself. Everything after that is a browser.