AnyDesk Remote Desktop

Review by eFreeware

AnyDesk Remote Desktop does one thing and does it broadly: it lets you reach a device that isn't in front of you and work on it as if it were. That could be a desktop in an office across town, a laptop at a relative's house or a machine in another country. The app is published by AnyDesk Software GmbH and has been on Google Play since February 2017, so it is not a newcomer to this category.

The audience the developer describes is wide but specific in its way: IT support staff, people working from home, and students studying remotely. If your day involves helping someone with a computer they can't quite explain over the phone, or picking up work stored on a machine you left behind, this is the sort of tool that solves that problem directly. It is free to download, carries no ads and has no in-app purchases, and the developer says personal use is free while commercial use goes through a separate ordering page.

Remote help without the drive across town

The clearest use case is assisting someone else. A family member's laptop misbehaves, or a colleague needs a setting changed on a machine you can't physically reach. With AnyDesk installed on both ends, you connect and take over the session rather than talking them through menus. For anyone who has spent an hour on the phone describing where a button is, that shift from instructions to hands-on control is the whole point.

File transfer matters here too. Rather than emailing a document back and forth, you can move it between the two machines as part of the session. Remote printing adds another practical option: a document sitting on the remote computer can be sent to a printer without first dragging it onto your own device. Neither feature is exotic, but together they cover most of what a support call actually needs.

Wake-On-LAN is the one that solves a problem people often discover late. A machine that is powered down or asleep is normally unreachable, and this feature is designed to bring it back up so a session can begin. I'd expect that to matter most to anyone supporting hardware in an office or a home study that isn't kept running around the clock.

Working on a machine you left behind

A student with a heavy desktop application at home and a lighter device on campus, or someone traveling who needs a file that only exists on the office machine, can connect and use the remote system directly. The developer pitches this as working from anywhere, and the mechanics are the same as the support scenario: install on both sides, connect, confirm on the remote end.

Performance is where remote desktop tools usually live or die, and the developer makes loud claims here: high frame rates, low latency and what it calls outstanding performance. Those are marketing terms rather than measurable promises, and how well they hold up depends on the connection between the two devices rather than on the app alone.

Security gets a similarly bold label, with the developer describing banking-standard encryption. The underlying point is that a remote session is meant to be protected end to end. The VPN feature extends this idea by creating a private network between the connecting and remote clients, adding an extra layer of protection for the session.

What the VPN option adds, and what it doesn't

The VPN is the most interesting piece of the feature set, and also the one most likely to be misunderstood. It builds a private network between the two clients involved in the connection. The developer is explicit that this does not let you reach other devices on the remote client's local network, nor the reverse. If you were hoping to browse a whole home network through one connection, that is not what this does.

What it does support is more targeted. Once the VPN link is up, SSH access to the remote device and LAN multiplayer gaming over the internet can run across it. Those are narrow, technical uses, but they are real ones, and they explain why the VPN exists rather than being a generic privacy add-on.

Connection via VPN is also listed among the standard remote desktop functions alongside file transfer, remote printing and Wake-On-LAN. The plain connection is the standard way to use it. It is there for the cases that need it.

Getting a session running

Setup is deliberately short. You install and launch AnyDesk on both devices, enter the AnyDesk-ID shown on the remote machine, confirm the access request on that remote device, and the session is live. Four steps, and the confirmation step is the important one: the person or machine on the receiving end has to approve the connection before anything happens.

The app is designed to work across different platforms. The developer's claim of every operating system and every device is central to the design, since a session is only useful if the two ends can talk to each other regardless of what they are running. AnyDesk also offers deployment in the cloud or on-premises, which is the kind of option that matters to organizations with their own infrastructure requirements.

The app's recent update history is unglamorous but worth noting for anyone running it on a TV. A September 2026 release fixed a handful of bugs, including settings that weren't reachable on Android TV via a TV remote, an issue where the device's own AnyDesk ID wasn't always displayed, and two stability problems in the networking layer. None of that changes what the app does, but it shows the Android client is still being worked on.

Where AnyDesk fits

The install base is large, past 100 million, which tells you the app has found a wide audience. The rating picture is less flattering: a 2.8 average across more than 133,000 ratings. That gap between reach and satisfaction is the single most useful thing to know before installing. It suggests plenty of people try it, and a substantial number come away unhappy.

What the app is built for is clear enough. If your work involves reaching machines you can't sit down at, whether that's helping someone else or getting to your own computer from elsewhere, this is the category of tool you need, and AnyDesk covers the core jobs: control, file transfer, printing, wake-on-LAN and an optional VPN for SSH or LAN gaming over the internet.

It is not a general-purpose utility, and its value depends on having something at the other end worth connecting to. The free personal-use terms make it easy to try, while commercial use routes through the developer's ordering page. Anyone evaluating it for a business should factor that in from the start.

A tool for reaching machines, not a general-purpose app

I'd suggest AnyDesk to people with a recurring need to reach another computer: the relative who ends up as tech support for the family, the remote worker whose files live on an office machine, the student who needs a heavier system than the one in front of them. The four-step connection process is simple enough that setting it up on both ends shouldn't be a barrier.

The mixed rating average is the reason I'd frame this as worth trying rather than a guaranteed fit. It costs nothing to install for personal use, carries no ads and asks for no in-app purchases, so the experiment is cheap. If remote access is a regular part of your week, the feature set is broad enough to cover the usual cases, and the VPN adds options for the technical ones.

For commercial deployments, the paid route through the developer's site is the relevant path, and the on-premises option exists for organizations that need it. For everyone else, this is a capable remote desktop client with a long history and a large user base, and the sensible move is to test it on your own setup before relying on it.

What's new in version 9.0.2

Fixed Bugs * Fixed a bug that the own AnyDesk ID was not shown in some scenarios. * Fixed some settings not being reachable on Android TV via TV remote. * Fixed a deadlock when relay state changed. * Fixed race condition in network info panel that could lead to a crash.