RealVNC server on RasPi with Raspian/Debian Bookworm - current situation

Oct 11, 2026 Last reply: 1 hour ago 3 Replies

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NY 3 hours ago

I know that at one time newer versions of Raspian (eg Bookworm) wouldn't run RealNVC server because of a problem with Wayland.

Has that situation been resolved yet? Is there a version of RealVNC server that will work with Debian Bookworm to allow cloud-based connections from outside my LAN?

I've got RealVNC client (eg on Windows or Android) to connect to my Pi by Direct connection, but that doesn't help with accessing from the WAN (eg if my phone or laptop is connected to a different internet connection when I'm away from home).

The workaround is to use Port Forwarding on my router, to forward <WAN-IP>:<port> to <Pi-LAN-IP>:5900 so an external connection looks like an internal LAN connection.

However I've got a new internet connection and the company (by default) uses CGNAT which means that port-forwarding doesn't work.

I may be able to get a static IP address from my internet company which presumably means there is no CGNAT (or at least, no double-NAT) so I can access ports on the WAN address from the outside world and use port-forwarding to pass on traffic to the Pi on the LAN.

But if that is not possible, I'll need a RealVNC solution that uses a cloud-based connection (as for RealVNC server on Windows) - hence my initial question.

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Knute Johnson 2 hours ago

If you want to run RealVNC server on your Pi and access it from the internet you need to set your Pi to use X11 not Wayland. Do that in raspi-config. You can get a free account from RealVNC for up to 3 servers for personal use. It works great. I have 3 Pis running RealVNC server and accessing them from the internet. You can even get an Android RealVNC viewer, it works great too.

Or look at the RaspberryPi scheme that I don't know anything about.

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Chris Townley 2 hours ago

snip >

Raspberry Pi connect

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NY 1 hour ago

Ah, I didn't know it was possible to change from Wayland to X11. I'll investigate.

Does changing from Wayland to X11 "break" anything that I might want to run on the Pi? Did older versions of Raspian (the versions avilable when the Pi 3 was sold) use X11?

I think I've got a spare RealVNC account, in addition to the two that I use for accessing my desktop and laptop Windows PCs. It's a shame that they reduced the "Lite" limit from five to three...

Annoyingly, three of the applications (*) that I use on the Pi on the PC only have HTTP interfaces (on different ports) so I either have to use port-forwarding to access from the internet or else RealVNC to the Pi (on X11!) and then start a browser on there to access the apps from the LAN.

(*) TVHeadend video recorder; Cumulus weather station software; an app for monitoring electricity usage over time on Kasa smart-plugs, to check that our deep freezers are working OK (look for any anomalous usage...)

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