Microsoft will kill Remote Desktop soon, insists you'll love replacement The end is nigh for Microsoft's Remote Desktop application. The IT giant will pull support on May 27 when users must transition to the corp's Windows App, with all the positives and negatives that entails. The Windows App arrived in 2024 to a lukewarm reception. At the time, Microsoft said: "This unified app serves as your …
To be fair, the ‘old app’ was quite good, it allowed you to setup multiple RDP connections in one place, flip between them, save credentials etc even have a little thumbnail of what the connection looked like. Yes nothing you couldn’t do with multiple MSTSC ‘connections’, but it was more convenient.
The Windows App, ye Gods, it does nothing better from what I can see, and on a Mac, it crashes with alarming regularity, especially if you just want to terminate an RDP session but not log off, if you actually do want to log off, and often if you just look at it in the wrong way.
It’s about as stable as a jelly nailed to the wall!
In my last job I used the Mac version of the Windows Remote Desktop app all the time when working from home, it was great, with icons for the machines I connected to making it easy to select my office desktop, or the management server.
What was more awkward was remembering which keys on an Apple keyboard did what on a Windows or Linux box. I remember getting in a real pickle when connecting to an iMac from my iMac via a Windows management server...
RDCMan isn't supported anymore and finding a download can be painful, so I wouldn't recommend it at all. Rather, I'd recommend Remote Desktop Manager. I've implemented it with great success in two different orgs, and it's completely free for personal use. I genuinely can't live without it.
Not sure where you're getting that, as the Remote Desktop app was actually pretty good when I used it. It had all of RDC's features and more, including a thumbnail view of saved servers. Probably the only thing it didn't have was command line support—I didn't test if it did but I assume it wouldn't.
As explained in the article, the built-in Remote Desktop Connection client (mstsc.exe) is not going anywhere.
The older Microsoft Remote Desktop in the article is a Microsoft Store -only app that provides access to (Azure) VDI infrastructure.
Micros~1 has developed 'Microsoft App' last year, which has feature parity with the aforementioned Microsoft Remote Desktop app and that's the reasons the former app is now to be discontinued.
The naming of both Microsoft Remote Desktop AND Microsoft App is atrocious, no question about it!
RDCMan is a connection manager/frontend for the mstsc.exe, part of Sysinternals and supported. (I guess it's feature complete since last version was 2 years ago - works for me as well)
Cheers for highlighting it to me — wasn't aware of exactly what it did (have been meaning to go through all of the tools since they were winternals but really all I use anymore is procexp). I rarely need to RDP anymore let alone view a bunch of connections simultaneously, so I'll stick with three-character aliases for connections that I can invoke from Win+R and bear rdcman in mind for some ghastly future where I'm a sysadmin again
Microsoft used to be known as geniuses at marketing - if not software development. But how silly is this? No more Remote Desktop app, but you still have to use Remote Desktop to use remote desktop (RDP) connections? And for everything else you use "Windows App"? Coming soon: Office (sorry, MS 365) will now be renamed as "Info Fiddling App". Flight Sim 2024 will be "Boundary Layer App"...
Same on the Windows version (which I've never seen the point of anyway - if you want Word, Excel, etc, just load them - there's no need to load an app to then load another program).
And of course 'M365 Copilot' is treated as a new app in the Windows store, and pushed out automatically - meaning that if you use Intune you need to create a new app rule to nuke the bugger or it'll appear on all your machines.
[...] if you want Word, Excel, etc, just load them - there's no need to load an app to then load another program[...].
There is if you're Micros~1.
Nobody knows what that reason is, and certainly no one can articulate it. But it's there, you just have to be Micros~1 to see it. Thank Ghod for the rest of us...
Same on the Windows version (which I've never seen the point of anyway - if you want Word, Excel, etc, just load them - there's no need to load an app to then load another program).
It's been that way for decades -- 2003, maybe 2000.
When starting desktop Word / Excel, it loads the installer, which verifies the installation, which then starts the real program.
It's supposed to be invisible, and often is.
Remote Desktop App, while like most of MS App Store, people avoided, actually tried to give you a one pane view into all your RDC connections.
Remote Desktop Connection, fits like many things into that that, "looks old", but unlike newer MS things, actually works... is now "the working way."
Windows App, which strives to be modern, is restricted and controlled, and thus, pretty much unusable.
This is why when somebody points me at "new and shiny" from Microsoft, I yawn. Today's MS "best" is tomorrow's trash.
MS making most of the FUD and lies they spread about Linux applications for years moot.
Never tried the Remote Desktop App but I'm willing to bet I could land on the desktop of my choice using the keyboard quicker than the store app could even load whatever godforsaken GUI it probably uses to manage the connections.
In fact if I had it installed I doubt I'd even be able to find it on the start menu, given recent Windows versions' ever-more-questionable ability to match the application of the name that you literally just typed in verbatim, as opposed to some other application whose name may or may not share the first letter of what you typed.
The only two Windows default applications that have received worthwhile upgrades as far as I'm concerned is cmd.exe to Terminal and the updated version of Notepad. Terminal is a big improvement for modern displays and working with absurdly long PowerShell commands, (which tends to be most of them). Notepad didn't need all the new features but they sure are nice to haves like tab support.
Sorry, that name isn't suitable - someone reading that name might get an idea of what it actually does, and we can't have that, can we? And it's easy to search for on t'internet too.
"Windows App" is clearly a much better choice as it achieves both aims of having a name which gives no indication of the app's purpose, while at the same time being nearly impossible to search for as most of the results will be irrelevant!
Nobody at my last job could understand why I thought "data platform" was a stupid name for the "system" (a vaguely disparate bunch of DBs in a SQL Server instance running on an Azure VM, thus achieving the throughput and latency of a mid-range mobile phone from 2012) they'd brought me in to manage.
This shit always reminds me of the Jack Dee line about disliking the term "OAP" because it's like telling somebody the same thing three times.
> achieving the throughput and latency of a mid-range mobile phone from 2012
Like Exchange Online is about as fast as an Exchange 2010 on Server 2008 (not R2) in 2012, but on spinning 10k drives, not on SSD (but with enough RAM to run good - don't take away the RAM).
The comparison with "as fast as 13 years ago" is quite close to a lot of things, like the Windows 11 24h2 UI and so on.
Microsoft do suffer from a bit of mental block when it comes to naming stuff, Much like trying to troubleshoot Outlook… which can be for my users, either
Real Outlook (Classic fat client)
Outlook 365 (fat client)
Outlook 365 (web client)
Free, toy outlook (Windows mail)
New outlook (the bastard spawn of the two above)
Then make sure you log into teams…
Teams - work credentials don’t work
Teams - work credentials do work
Teams - work credentials and personal work
Teams - web based
You can copy the calc.exe from Windows NT 3.51, 4.0, XP or Sever 2003, and it just works in Win11. I recommend stealing it from the 2003 R2 x64 service pack 2. And get a few other important thinks from the latter package, like the task manager...
BTW: calc.exe from NT 3.51 does NOT do the force 0.234e-4 notation if you don't want it. But I switched to powershell for many calc stuff. Especially since [decimal]1/3 runs with 128 bit precision, compare without the enforced [decimal] type.
Other alternative: Run Server 2022 or Server 2025, where the calc.exe on both is still the better classic, not re-skinned thingy.
If you want precision, Precise Calculator has been there for over 20 years, before Android and iPhone. Current version requires at least Windows 2000. I bet someone here knows a predecessor for DOS/UNIX/whatever around 1990 and before...
I have the problem that mstsc only uses Kerberos (as a client) when several weird combinations match. No problem within the same AD-domain, problematic within multidomain forest, very problematic with trusts, very very very problematic without trust, impossible if you type in the IP of the remote you want to connect to. The latter is what I have to use > 90% of the time to support, and neither my Laptop, nor the dedicated jump server are in the same domain as the final jump server. And for security reasons a lot of things are blocked.
mstsc tries NTLM, which I want to get rid of, but I still cannot. Normally you should be able to say "force kerberos, with this username, and this is the actual FQDN of the host to use for auth, even though I connect directly via IP" - but no. Can this new thing do? Well, I suspect not, since things that make sense don't get implemented. Can any RDP client do this? Open for suggestions here!
Just like my coworkers fight the stupidness of "new outlook" because they have to use it (how else could they support it) while I still tug along with less cursing with my "old" outlook, it will be the same with this new RDP client. I already tried the android version of the new RDP client, and kicked it for the variant from devolutions.net (will check tomorrow for a win-version, maybe I am lucky ?)..
Well, all advanced users and enterprise users (their admins via GPO) turn of every telemetry possible. So Microsoft only gets telemetry from home users, which cannot turn it off completely (at least no so easy), or from the non-advanced users or bad managed enterprise users.
So those six users which need it AND still have telemetry on are a small match group in the Venn diagram.
This problem is more common that you think, most give up and let that door open without a solution. Will soon be more since Microsoft pushes NTLM more and more out of the system, it will rise. I am simply among those at the front of the possible security, so I see those things earlier.
Oh no, I just stumbled upon mstsc.exe /remoteguard upon checking mremoteng docs - does seem to enforce kerberos.... Great, why does mstsc.exe /? not provide actually useful information on that option.
Well, by the sound of it most people on here are either using the old remote desktop client that's been bundled with windows for years, or other third party clients. This change is to the Remote Desktop App that is distributed from the Microsoft Store so not the thing that most people are putting up with.
It's almost like people read the headline and head straight to comments to spam for upvotes with snark without actualy parsing the article and understanding it.
Almost.
......said with all the sincerity of a supply teacher dressed as a clown trying to get a bunch of moody teenagers to learn algebra.
I imagine the reason for less functionality as described in comments above is so they could make room for all the telemetry and data harvesting processes it'll inevitably run in the background.
I've installed Windows App and am seeing no devices in my list, so it's telling me to contact my system admin. Surely you don't have to get every server that you need to connect to added to your Windows account by an admin to be able to use it? Please tell me that's not the case and that there's a way to simply add my frequently used RDP connections to it in the same way as with RDCMan?
I'd try and find this out myself, but since some marketing genius at Microsoft has decided to call the thing "Windows App" it's virtually impossible to get meaningful or relevant search results. I can find all sorts of info about Windows app development or how to install and app on Windows, but f-all about this new tool.
The name "Windows App" is quite a clever marketing ploy. Retire Remote Desktop, move everybody to Windows App, then make Windows a subscription only service hosted in the cloud ta-da. You install a seriously cut-down stub on your PC, then use "Windows App" to connect to Windows. If they had called it remote app, people would be reminded every time they start it they are connecting to a remote system, but Windows App just makes it sound like you're starting Windows. Whatever the reason they are doing it, they are sure it's going to make them money somehow.
Oh, I was worried for a hot second. They're discontinuing the successor of the thing I never use because I'm too old? Fine. As long as "mstsc /v:server" still works... it's the only way I ever use RDP outside of an iPad, where I use Jump Desktop, which is and has always been great.
I also do my drafting using all AutoCAD keyboard commands because once you learn something one time, the momentum...
This is the most confusing article ever with no attempt at clarity. Remote Desktop app isn't Remote Desktop Connection isn't Remote Desktop Services? (Maybe make it more clear that one is only from the Store.) Windows App is for connecting to Remote Desktop and Remote Desktop Services, but it doesn't support the connection type used by Remote Desktop Connection and Remote Desktop Services?
In future you might find that your PC will just be a co-pilot box with 'Windows App' connecting to web versions of 365 and nothing running locally except co-pilot, which by the way won't be working on your data, it'll be doing M$ work, presumably in place of all of these server farms.
Far less misleading than previous articles, but still not quite there. To be fair, with the ridiculous app names and poorly worded comms, MS haven't made it easy.
What is going is the atrocious Remote Desktop Store app, which hasn't been available from the store in a while. Now support is going to end.
The Remote Desktop Client for Windows app (installed via MSI) will remain the preferred app for Windows users connecting to Windows 365 (!) or Azure Virtual Desktop for which Windows App is a long way from being ready.
Who the fuck is responsible for these names? They'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes. Standing next to whoever came up with "New Outlook".
So you've never witnessed "Please wait while Microsoft Windows configures the Microsoft Windows Installer to install Microsoft Office 2000 Professional on your Microsoft Windows..." ? And I am not making this up... Though my wording may be better than the original :D
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