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Clipboard, Audio & Files

Beyond video and input, Waylo bridges the clipboard, streams desktop audio, and moves files in both directions.

Shared clipboard​

Text copied on the remote desktop appears in your browser's clipboard, and text you copy locally can be pasted into the remote session — the clipboard is kept in sync over Mutter's RemoteDesktop selection APIs. There is a size cap on synced content to keep large copies from flooding the link.

Desktop audio​

Waylo streams the host's desktop audio to the browser:

  • The host captures its default output monitor via PulseAudio/PipeWire and encodes Opus (48 kHz stereo, 20 ms frames): pulsesrc → opusenc → rtpopuspay.
  • The browser decodes it with the WebCodecs AudioDecoder.
  • Use the toolbar's mute control to silence audio; muting also closes the decoder to save CPU, and unmuting recreates it (Opus recovers within a frame or two).

Audio requires a browser with WebCodecs AudioDecoder support; where it's unavailable, video and input continue to work normally.

File transfer​

  • Upload — send a file from your browser into the session user's downloads directory on the host (POST /api/upload, up to 4 GB per file).
  • Download — files copied on the remote desktop are offered to the browser as downloads. A copy in the remote session surfaces the copied files as download offers on the client side.

File-download offers live with the session and are cleared when it ends.

tip

File transfer and clipboard both flow over the authenticated session — the same SSH-verified login that gates the desktop stream gates these too. See Security.