Clipboard and keyboard
What crosses between your computer and the remote one, what is refused, and where your keys go.
Clipboard
With the clipboard on, what you copy on one side can be pasted on the other:
| What | Both ways |
|---|---|
| Text, plain and formatted | Yes |
| Images, such as a screenshot | Yes |
| Files and folders | Yes |
Files from the remote computer arrive when you paste them, not when they were copied: nothing is transferred that you did not ask for.
Refusing files, keeping text
The setting Clipboard files (rdp.redirect.clipboardFiles) can be switched off for a folder, a computer or a
connection. Text and images still cross; files do not, in either direction. Use it for computers from which, or to
which, files should not travel by accident.
The setting Clipboard switches the whole clipboard off.
What PluggedDesk refuses
A remote computer describes the files it offers by name. If any name in the list could place a file outside the folder you paste into (a path that climbs upwards, a drive letter, a device name), the whole list is refused, not just that entry. A server that tries it once is not asked again in that session.
Folders you copy from your own computer are read to a limited depth and a limited number of files.
Keyboard
A session has the keyboard when you have clicked into it. While it does:
- what you type goes to the remote computer;
- the Windows key and combinations with it go to the remote computer;
- Alt Tab switches between windows of the remote computer.
To send Ctrl Alt Del, press Ctrl Alt End, or use the button on the session's toolbar.
Getting the keyboard back
Click anywhere outside the session: a tab, the Explorer, the title bar. Opening one of PluggedDesk's own menus also returns the keyboard to PluggedDesk for as long as the menu is open, so Esc closes the menu and does not reach the remote computer.
The buttons on a session's toolbar never take the keyboard. Pressing one does not release keys you are holding down on the remote computer.
Known limits
- Sound from the remote computer, printers, drives and smart cards are separate settings, all off by default. They are handed to the engine as you set them, and have been tested less widely than the clipboard.
- The keyboard layout used on the remote computer is the remote computer's. PluggedDesk sends which keys you pressed, not which characters they make on your own layout, except for text typed through an input method.