Remote Access

A simple web-based remote desktop application that allows you to control your computer through a browser. This project was done to learn basic webdev with Flask.

Features

• Real-time screen streaming
• Mouse and keyboard control
• File upload to server
• Web-based interface

System Architecture

The application follows a three-tier architecture:

• Client Browser: HTML/CSS/JS interface for user interaction
• Flask Server: Python backend handling routing, capture, and input control
• Host System: Screen capture (mss) and input control (pyautogui)

Requirements

• Python 3.x
• Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux

Note: The current requirements.txt includes macOS-specific dependencies (pyobjc). For Windows/Linux, you may need to remove these lines and install only the core dependencies (Flask, mss, Pillow, pyautogui).

Installation

1. Clone the repository
2. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

1. Start the server:

python run_server.py

2. Open your browser and navigate to:

http://127.0.0.1:5001

Configuration

Edit server/config.py to customize:

• HOST - Server host (use 0.0.0.0 for network access)
• PORT - Server port (default: 5001)
• FPS - Stream frame rate (default: 60)
• IMAGE_QUALITY - JPEG quality (default: 30)
• SCALE - Screen scale factor (default: 0.5)
• UPLOAD_FOLDER - File upload destination (default: ~/Downloads)

Project Structure

remote-access/
├── client/          # Frontend files (HTML, CSS, JS)
├── server/          # Backend Flask application
├── run_server.py    # Server entry point
├── architecture.png # Architecture image
├── LICENSE          # License file
├── README.md        # README file
├── .gitignore       # gitignore file
└── requirements.txt # Python dependencies

Technology Stack

Backend

• Flask: Web framework
• mss: Fast screen capture
• Pillow (PIL): Image processing
• pyautogui: Mouse/keyboard control

Frontend

• Vanilla JavaScript: No frameworks
• CSS3: Modern styling with Inter font
• HTML5: Semantic markup

Communication

• HTTP/1.1: Request/response
• Multipart JPEG: Video streaming
• JSON: API payloads

Future Enhancements

In order to turn this into a fully fledged working app, there would need to be a centralized server running a web app which 2 devices can log on to and authenticate with each other to view screens/transfer files etc. This can be done using flask auth and instead of running a server on the host system, the central server would run the server to which both the host and user can connect to.