SSH-VNC client on Windows

Windows computer can securely connect to a VNC server on a remote computer tunneled over SSH. For software development on a remote computer, it can be easier to use VSCode over SSH to the remote computer. We use SSH tunneling for the insecure protocols like RDP and VNC, which are unencrypted and should not be exposed to the internet directly.

This procedure works from a local Windows PC to a remote VNC server on Linux, macOS, etc. We assume the remote server computer has an SSH server and VNC server already setup.

On the local Windows computer, add to the ~/.ssh/config for this Host a line like:

  LocalForward 5990 localhost:5900

where 5900 is the VNC port on the remote PC, and 5990 is an arbitrary distinct port on the local PC to avoid clashes on 5900. Note: the VNC server might use port other than 5900. On Linux a common default VNC port is 5901.

To connect, ssh to the server as usual, then use VNC Viewer to connect to localhost:5990. When the SSH connection (tunnel) is closed, so is the VNC connection.

Reference: macOS network ports