Late-night calls from the boss are rarely good news. A system goes down, someone needs it fixed immediately, and without remote access I’d be ordering a taxi to the office. With SunLogin on the office PC, I can log in from home and handle the problem instead.
Remote work has become routine, and for IT staff especially, remote desktop access is not a luxury. I’ve used several tools over the years, across Windows and Mac: TeamViewer, ToDesk, AnyViewer, and SunLogin—the SunLoginClient from Oray. I’m not ranking them; preference is personal. I ended up with SunLogin because I’ve also used other Oray products such as Peanut Shell, Peanut Stick, and Dandelion and have had a reasonable experience with them.
What SunLogin offers
- Personal use is free, which matters if you’re trying not to spend extra.
- It works across platforms, including Windows and Mac.
- It supports screen casting, and a phone can connect back to a computer.
- Remote sessions use encrypted data, and the verification code can be set to stay fixed so access doesn’t break when the network changes.
There’s also an enterprise edition with more capabilities; that’s outside what I need here.
Setting up the office machine
My office computer runs Windows 10, so that’s the setup I’ll describe. Download the personal edition and install it. Making it start with Windows is optional. If you want that, press win + R, type shell:startup, and put a SunLogin shortcut in the startup folder.
Also set SunLogin to use a long-term verification code. This avoids the code changing because of a network change, a shutdown, or something similar—and then leaving you unable to connect.
Stop the office PC from sleeping
I’ll call the machine being controlled the “server side” here: the office computer. My home laptop is the client. A sleeping computer cannot be reached, so the office machine has to stay awake.
Open Start > Settings, then choose System.
Go to Power & sleep and set both Screen and Sleep to “Never.” That disables the usual automatic sleep behavior.
Even with those settings, I found that the PC could still sleep in some cases. The power plan was overriding them. In the same area, open Additional power settings.
Set all four options there to “Never.”
The result should look like this:
On a laptop, you can also right-click and open Power Options directly.
Phone access and the end of the day
There’s also a mobile app. It can be used for screen casting or for connecting to the computer remotely, which is handy when you’re away from the laptop.
Once everything is configured, the end-of-day routine is simple: turn off the monitor and go. The office PC stays reachable, and the next late-night system alert doesn’t have to turn into a trip across town.