{ "$meta": { "locale": "en", "label": "English", "dir": "ltr", "note": "Every user-visible string on the site lives in this file. Brand strings are never written out — they are interpolated from shared/brand.js via brand tokens, and prices via price tokens. Inline markup is a deliberately tiny subset: bold, italic, code and links, in the syntax documented in js/copy.js. Anything else is rendered as plain text." }, "meta": { "title": "{{brand.name}} — let your PC sleep, and reach it anyway", "description": "Let your PC sleep and still reach it from anywhere. Sleep it from your phone when you walk away, it holds itself awake while something is genuinely running, and ten minutes after the last activity it goes back to sleep. When you need it, wake it — and find out whether it actually came up. No port forwarding, nothing exposed inbound, and no software needed on the PC you are waking. Free plan for one machine, open firmware, self-hostable relay.", "ogTitle": "{{brand.name}} — let your PC sleep, and reach it anyway", "ogDescription": "A machine that sleeps costs pennies; one left on for the odd remote session is a heater with a fan in it. This sleeps it from anywhere, holds it awake while something is running, lets it go back to sleep ten minutes after the last activity, and wakes it again through an Echo you already own, a machine you already leave on, or a dongle you build." }, "skipLink": "Skip to main content", "media": { "$note": "Media slots (2026-08-13). Each entry describes ONE asset and site/tools/prose.mjs projects it into the static HTML at build time — so alt text, posters and dimensions are in the file a crawler reads, not assembled by script. Nothing in js/main.js re-renders these; js/media.js only adds playback behaviour on top. AN EMPTY OBJECT IS THE 'NOT YET' STATE: {} means the slot exists, projects to nothing, and the page is exactly as it was — which is how this shipped before any picture did. TO FILL A SLOT: (1) put the file in site/public/media/ with a CONTENT HASH in its name, because /media/* is cached immutably for a year and a reused name would serve the old bytes forever; (2) record it in site/public/media/README.md with the tool, date and prompt; (3) fill the entry here — kind 'image' needs src, width, height and alt (empty string if decorative), and may add avif and eager; kind 'video' needs src, poster, width, height and alt, and gets preload=none, muted, loop and playsinline automatically; (4) run node site/tools/gen-brand.mjs. THREE RULES ON WHAT MAY BE HERE, which are about honesty rather than taste: the dongle is a real product so it is PHOTOGRAPHED, never generated; anything readable on a screen is SCREENSHOTTED from the real thing, never generated, because an invented UI is an invented claim; and generated imagery is for rooms and moments that assert nothing. Alt text is copy and obeys every catalogue-wide guard — no typed prices, no unattributed paid capability, no competitor names.", "hero": { "kind": "image", "src": "/media/hero-home-office.17a5ba35.webp", "width": 2560, "height": 1086, "alt": "", "eager": true } }, "nav": { "brandSuffix": "", "problem": "The problem", "routes": "What sends it", "how": "How it works", "compare": "Compare", "checker": "Will it work?", "pricing": "Pricing", "faq": "FAQ", "docs": "Docs", "cta": "Create a free account", "menu": "Menu", "menuOpen": "Open navigation", "menuClose": "Close navigation", "theme": "Switch between light and dark theme", "themeDark": "Dark", "themeLight": "Light", "signin": "Sign in", "dashboard": "Open your dashboard" }, "hero": { "$note": "The sub is three sentences and stays three: a phone 390 points wide gives the hero about six lines above the fold, and a fourth sentence puts the \"Create a free account\" button below it. So the sub carries the arc and nothing else — sleep it when you walk away, it holds itself up while something is running, waking is the one step that needs a sender inside the network — and names no route, no price and no plan. The long form is routes.lead and the routes table below the problem section: the senders in the order a reader with nothing bought should meet them, that the first two cost nothing, the no-port-forwarding line, and the wake claim stated exactly (\"waking needs nothing installed on the PC itself\" — WAKING never needs software on the target, a property of Wake-on-LAN, while sleeping, restarting and shutting a machine down are impossible without software on it, which is what the optional agent is). home-copy.test.mjs pins the split. The trust bullets say what they mean for the same reason — \"No software needed to wake\", not \"Nothing installed on your PC\".", "eyebrow": "Asleep by default, awake while you use it", "title": "Asleep by default. Awake while you use it. Reachable when you need it.", "sub": "Sleep the machine from your phone when you walk away. While something is running on it — a remote session, a file transfer, a download, a Claude Code run — it holds itself up, and ten minutes after the last activity it goes back to sleep. Waking it again is the one step that needs something inside your network to send the packet.", "free": { "$note": "The free plan, split in two around the sign-up button. `lead` is the one sentence that decides whether a reader thinks this costs money, so it sits above the button and is projected into the static HTML like the sub-line. `pending` and `live` are the hardware answer, which changes the day Amazon publishes the skill — before it, something of ours has to be on the network; after it, an Echo already there will do — so it is written twice rather than hedged once; main.js picks between them from /api/flags, the same gate the pricing grid's voice row uses, and fills the note under the store badges, where its length no longer pushes the button below a phone's fold. Both states name the agent, because the emitter role is free on every plan and needs no hardware purchase at all. The live state does not mention the API: the free plan has no API keys, and a free-plan paragraph must not list a paid capability.", "lead": "**The free plan sleeps and wakes one machine, from anywhere, and does not expire.**", "pending": "Ten sleeps a calendar month through the free [agent](/agent), unlimited wakes, and ten Remote AI sessions. Something on your network has to send the wake, and that means an emitter of yours: the agent installed on a machine you already leave on — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS — or a dongle you build from a Pico W. Voice wake through an Echo you already own is built and sitting with Amazon for certification; when it is published it will be free on every plan, this one included.", "live": "Ten sleeps a calendar month through the free [agent](/agent), unlimited wakes, and ten Remote AI sessions. If you own an Echo, that is the entire hardware list for the waking half: tell us the machine’s name and its network address, and \"Alexa, turn on the study PC\" works — from the app, from anywhere in the world, and on a timer through an Alexa Routine. The agent on a machine you already leave on — or, with neither, a dongle you build — is what you add when you want to wake from the dashboard instead, or a machine your Echo cannot reach." }, "ctaPrimary": "Create a free account", "ctaPrimaryAvailable": "Create a free account", "trust": [ "Sleep it from anywhere", "Back to sleep ten minutes after you stop", "Works with the Echo you own", "Free agent, nothing to buy", "No software needed to wake", "No port forwarding", "Open source", "REST API and webhooks" ] }, "stats": { "note": "Every figure here is a property of the device or the licence, measured or checked. The paid tiers have only just opened, so we are not going to print a user count.", "items": [ { "value": 0.5, "decimals": 1, "unit": " W", "label": "Idle draw", "detail": "Measured at the wall on a Pico 2 W holding an idle relay connection. About 4.4 kWh a year." }, { "value": 1.1, "decimals": 2, "prefix": "£", "label": "A year of electricity", "detail": "4.4 kWh at 25p per kWh. A desktop left idling instead costs roughly £90 to £200 a year." }, { "value": 0, "label": "Ports forwarded", "detail": "The connection is outbound only. Nothing on your network is reachable from the internet because of this device." }, { "value": 2, "label": "Open licences", "detail": "MIT for the firmware, case and tools. AGPL-3.0 for the reference relay." } ] }, "problem": { "eyebrow": "Why something has to be inside your network", "title": "A magic packet cannot cross the internet", "lead": "You are here because there is a machine you sometimes need from somewhere else — the files on it, the remote desktop, the render queue — and leaving it running all day to maybe use it twice is the wrong answer. Letting it sleep is the easy half. Getting it back is where every product in this category, ours included, meets the same piece of physics, and the next thirty seconds explain it.", "points": [ { "title": "Wake-on-LAN is a LAN broadcast", "body": "A magic packet is a UDP broadcast addressed to the whole local segment. Routers do not forward broadcasts, and no ISP will carry one to your house. There is no version of this that works purely from the cloud." }, { "title": "So something inside the network has to send it", "body": "Whatever you use — an app, a script, a voice assistant — the last hop has to originate on your LAN. That is a hard constraint of the protocol, not a limitation anyone has failed to engineer around." }, { "title": "Today, that something is usually a PC left switched on", "body": "Software-only services solve this by asking you to keep a machine awake to relay the packet. That works. It also means a computer idling at 40 to 90 watts so that a different computer can be asleep. If a machine of yours is already on all day for its own reasons — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS — that objection disappears, and our free agent will happily run there. An Echo you already own is on all day too, and it can send the packet for a voice wake. A dongle you build is for the network with neither." } ], "punchline": "Whatever sends the packet has to live inside your network. It does not have to be something you buy.", "diagram": { "caption": "Your phone talks to our relay over the internet. The relay talks to your emitter — the agent, or a dongle — over the connection the emitter opened. Only the emitter talks to your PC — and only over the LAN, because that is the only place a magic packet can go.", "alt": "A diagram in four parts. A phone sends a wake request over the internet to a relay in the cloud. The relay passes it down an outbound connection that your emitter opened from inside the home network. The emitter broadcasts a Wake-on-LAN magic packet across the local network to a sleeping PC. A separate crossed-out arrow runs directly from the cloud to the PC, labelled to show that a magic packet cannot cross the internet.", "nodePhone": "Your phone", "nodeCloud": "Relay", "nodeDongle": "Emitter", "nodePc": "Sleeping PC", "edgeUp": "HTTPS", "edgeDown": "Outbound TLS, held open", "edgeLan": "Magic packet, LAN broadcast", "edgeBlocked": "Broadcasts stop here", "boundary": "Your home network" } }, "routes": { "$note": "The four things that can put the packet on the network, in the order a reader with nothing bought should meet them: the Echo they own, the free agent on a box that is already on, a certified plug, and last the dongle — a self-build, never a kit for sale. home-copy.test.mjs pins that order and that the first two rows cost nothing. The facts every cell must hold: an Echo carries voice and the Alexa app ONLY — no dashboard, phone app, schedule, wake link, API or Claude connector; those need an agent or a dongle. The agent and the dongle carry every trigger. The plug is a cold start for a machine set to start when power returns, driven from the dashboard through an agent or dongle that reaches it, and on the paid plans (powerActions in shared/tiers.js). The cost column carries totals only — per-part prices belong to /dongle-kit. Product names a customer uses (Echo, Alexa, Raspberry Pi, Home Assistant) are fine; a provider's name is not. The Wi-Fi-only and Mac-over-Ethernet facts are stated once, in the lead, because the rows would otherwise imply every machine can be woken by packet. The lead is also where the sender list, the two routes that cost nothing, the exact wake claim and the no-port-forwarding line are made, because the hero above holds three sentences and no more (hero.$note). js/main.js renders this as a plain text table — no marks, because nothing here is a yes or a no — and site/tools/prose.mjs projects the same markup for crawlers.", "eyebrow": "How it wakes", "title": "Four things can send it. Two of them you may already own.", "lead": "Waking is the enabling step rather than the headline: the machine sleeps and holds itself awake on its own, and this is what gets it back when you ask. The sender is an Echo you already own, the free agent on a machine that already stays on, or a dongle you build — nothing to buy for the first two, and waking needs nothing installed on the PC itself. Nothing is port-forwarded, and no second computer is left running just to do this. Pick the one you have. An Echo sends voice wakes and wakes from the Alexa app; the agent and the dongle carry every way of asking — the dashboard, the phone app, Alexa and the Claude connector, plus schedules and the API on the paid plans and wake links on Pro. One piece of physics first: a Wi-Fi-only laptop cannot be woken by packet at all — its lid or its power button is the wake — and a Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only and never from full power-off, so the plug row is how a desktop Mac starts from off.", "columns": [ { "id": "cost", "label": "What it costs" }, { "id": "triggers", "label": "What can trigger it" }, { "id": "limit", "label": "The one limit" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "echo", "label": "An Amazon Echo you already own", "detail": "Our free, certified Alexa skill has the Echo broadcast the packet on your home network. With the free agent on the PC, that is voice wake, sleep and status on day one.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", and a tap in the Alexa app from anywhere in the world.", "limit": "Voice and the Alexa app only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below." } }, { "id": "agent", "label": "The free agent on a machine that already stays on", "detail": "A NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box, a mini PC — or a container on any of them. [One install line](/agent).", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, Alexa and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro.", "limit": "Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on." } }, { "id": "plug", "label": "A certified smart plug", "detail": "For a machine that starts when power is applied — most desktop PCs can be set to, and Apple-silicon desktop Macs do. It switches on a machine that is fully off and power-cycles one that is frozen.", "cells": { "cost": "About £10", "triggers": "Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans.", "limit": "The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume." } }, { "id": "dongle", "label": "A dongle you build", "detail": "A Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the network with no always-on machine and no Echo. The [parts list](/dongle-kit) names them.", "cells": { "cost": "About £17 in parts", "triggers": "Everything the agent carries.", "limit": "A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case." } } ], "mobileHint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column." }, "how": { "eyebrow": "Setup", "title": "Three steps, about five minutes", "lead": "The agent goes on the machine you want to sleep, and nothing is installed on a PC you only ever wake. The compatibility check further down tells you which of the machine’s own settings to flip — Windows, macOS or Linux — with the exact click-path. The second step is the only choice you make, and two of its three answers cost nothing. A dongle you build takes longer than five minutes; [its page](/dongle-kit) has the parts and the flashing.", "steps": [ { "title": "Create a free account and name the machine", "body": "Sign in with your email — no password — and add the machine by name and network address. Install the free [agent](/agent) on it and its row gains **Sleep**, holds the machine up while somebody is using it, and lets it drop back to sleep ten minutes after the last activity. One machine is free for as long as you like, and nothing is installed on a machine you only wake." }, { "title": "Pick what sends the packet", "body": "Own an Echo? Enable the free Alexa skill and say \"Alexa, discover devices\". Have a machine that stays on — a NAS, a Pi, a Home Assistant box? Paste the [agent](/agent)'s one install line on it. Neither? [Build the dongle](/dongle-kit), join its setup hotspot and give it your Wi-Fi. The table above is the choice." }, { "title": "Sleep it, and wake it when you need it", "body": "Press **Sleep** on the machine’s row when you walk away, or let it drop off by itself once nothing is running. When you need it again: the dashboard, the phone app, or \"Alexa, turn on the study PC\" — from anywhere. **Keep awake…** on Plus and Pro holds it up for a window you choose while a long job runs, and the dashboard prices the hours your machines spent asleep at your own tariff, so you can see what the arrangement saved." } ] }, "compare": { "eyebrow": "How we compare", "title": "How this compares to the alternatives", "lead": "There are five realistic ways to wake a PC remotely. Four of them are genuinely fine for some people. Here is where each one actually lands. One note: we ship a free software agent of our own, for exactly the \"software on a machine that stays on\" case — so the last column is no longer only other people's products. Where a cell reads \"not in the plans we reviewed\", that is precisely what it means: we read the free and paid tiers of the wake-on-LAN services people actually use and did not find it. It is not a claim that nobody anywhere offers it. And a word before the table: on price alone the software-only services win — some are free — so the comparison worth making is substance. What we did not find in any of them: an answer to \"did it actually come up?\", schedules that retry and report, other people with their own sign-ins, or a wake URL you can hand to someone with no account. That is what the rows below are checking.", "columns": [ { "$note": "Philip's decision 2026-08-09: this column describes the SUBSCRIBED product, because the apex page sells the subscription — the free tier's subset is the pricing grid's job, one section down. The cells still say which plan carries what, so nothing here promises a paid capability without naming its plan.", "id": "us", "label": "{{brand.name}}, subscribed", "sub": "From £{{price.plus}}/yr, with an Echo, the free agent or a dongle you build", "highlight": true }, { "id": "pc", "label": "Leave a PC on", "sub": "Free, 40–90 W" }, { "id": "nas", "label": "Router or NAS script", "sub": "Free if you own one" }, { "id": "plug", "label": "Smart plug", "sub": "£10–£25, ~1 W" }, { "id": "svc", "label": "Software-only service", "sub": "£0–£25/yr + a host PC" } ], "rows": [ { "label": "Works with every other machine asleep", "detail": "Nothing else in the house has to stay powered up for the wake to arrive.", "cells": { "us": [ "yes", "Yes — the sender is an Echo or a box that is on anyway, or a half-watt dongle" ], "pc": [ "no", "No — that is the point" ], "nas": [ "partial", "Only if the NAS or router is already on" ], "plug": [ "yes", "Yes" ], "svc": [ "no", "Needs an always-on host" ] } }, { "label": "Wakes from sleep rather than cutting power", "detail": "A magic packet resumes the machine cleanly. Yanking mains and restoring it is a cold boot, and only if the board is set to power on after a power loss.", "cells": { "us": [ "yes", "Yes — magic packet" ], "pc": [ "yes", "Yes — magic packet" ], "nas": [ "yes", "Yes — magic packet" ], "plug": [ "no", "No — power cycle only" ], "svc": [ "yes", "Yes — magic packet" ] } }, { "label": "No port forwarding, nothing exposed inbound", "detail": "The alternative is opening a UDP port to the internet, which is the single most common way this gets done badly.", "cells": { "us": [ "yes", "Outbound TLS only" ], "pc": [ "partial", "Depends entirely on the tool" ], "nas": [ "no", "Usually needs a forwarded port or a VPN" ], "plug": [ "yes", "Vendor cloud, outbound" ], "svc": [ "yes", "Outbound, via their daemon" ] } }, { "label": "Runs on hardware you control, with source you can read", "detail": "Firmware, case and tools are MIT; the reference relay is AGPL-3.0.", "cells": { "us": [ "yes", "Dongle, case and relay fully open, self-hostable" ], "pc": [ "partial", "Some tools are open" ], "nas": [ "yes", "It is your script" ], "plug": [ "no", "Closed vendor cloud" ], "svc": [ "no", "Closed daemon and cloud" ] } }, { "label": "Survives the vendor disappearing", "detail": "If we stop existing, does the hardware you bought keep working?", "cells": { "us": [ "yes", "Repoint it at your own relay" ], "pc": [ "partial", "Depends on the tool" ], "nas": [ "yes", "Nothing to disappear" ], "plug": [ "no", "Cloud shuts down, plug is a plug" ], "svc": [ "no", "Service ends, feature ends" ] } }, { "label": "Cost over five years", "detail": "Hardware plus electricity plus subscription, roughly, at 25p per kWh.", "cells": { "us": [ "yes", "The plan, from £{{price.plus}} a year — nothing more with an Echo or a box already on; a dongle adds its parts and about £6 of power" ], "pc": [ "no", "£440–£990 of electricity" ], "nas": [ "partial", "Free, if the box was already on" ], "plug": [ "yes", "About £20 plus £11 of power" ], "svc": [ "no", "£0–£125, plus the host PC's power" ] } }, { "label": "Confirms the PC actually came up", "detail": "A magic packet is fire-and-forget. Knowing whether it worked means probing the target afterwards.", "cells": { "us": [ "yes", "Yes — we probe the machine, tell you, and offer your own connect link the moment it is up" ], "pc": [ "partial", "If the tool bothers to check" ], "nas": [ "partial", "If you write it yourself" ], "plug": [ "no", "No idea, it only knows about mains" ], "svc": [ "no", "Not in the plans we reviewed" ] } }, { "label": "Tells you afterwards what happened", "detail": "Weeks later, when it did not wake and you want to know why. One record per attempt — kept for thirty days on Plus and twelve months on Pro.", "cells": { "us": [ "yes", "Every attempt, with the reason it failed" ], "pc": [ "partial", "Whatever the tool happened to log" ], "nas": [ "partial", "Only if you wrote the logging" ], "plug": [ "partial", "It logs switching, not whether the PC came up" ], "svc": [ "no", "Not in the plans we reviewed" ] } }, { "label": "Wire it into something else", "detail": "A token and a POST, for a script, a dashboard, or whatever you already run.", "cells": { "us": [ "yes", "REST API, plus webhooks on Pro" ], "pc": [ "partial", "Whatever the tool exposes" ], "nas": [ "yes", "It is your script" ], "plug": [ "partial", "Vendor cloud, if they publish an API" ], "svc": [ "no", "Not in the plans we reviewed" ] } } ], "legend": { "yes": "Yes", "partial": "Partly", "no": "No" }, "mobileHint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every option." }, "paths": { "eyebrow": "Bring, build or subscribe", "title": "Three ways to use this, and one clear boundary", "lead": "Everything the dongle does is open. What you pay for is hosted infrastructure — uptime, accounts, wake confirmation, power actions, webhooks, support. There is no crippled community firmware and no private premium firmware. The optional agent is the one closed binary we ship, and it is free either way: it is what sleeps a machine, holds it up while it is in use and puts it back — and installed on a machine that already stays on it is also an emitter, with no hardware to buy at all.", "items": [ { "kicker": "Bring it", "title": "Nothing to buy", "body": "An Echo you already own sends voice wakes through our free Alexa skill. The free [agent](/agent) on the machine itself is what sleeps it and holds it awake, and on a machine that already stays on — a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box — it sends the wake to everything else. Either one is the entire hardware list, and the free plan does not expire.", "cta": "Get the agent", "href": "/agent" }, { "kicker": "Build it", "title": "About £17 of parts, and the firmware is free", "body": "For the network with no Echo and nothing that stays on: a Raspberry Pi Pico W in a case — three off-the-shelf parts, and the [parts page](/dongle-kit) lists exactly which ones with live links for the UK, the US and the EU. The firmware, the case and the bill of materials are in [the repository]({{brand.repo}}); flashing is done from your browser over USB, nothing is soldered, and there is no part of this you buy from us.", "cta": "See the parts list", "href": "/dongle-kit" }, { "kicker": "Subscribe", "title": "Free plan, or a paid one", "body": "The free plan sleeps and wakes one machine from anywhere, for as long as you like, includes ten sleeps a calendar month, and keeps its last ten attempts on record. Paying is about holding a machine up and about people: Plus is a household — five machines, unmetered sleeps with **Keep awake…**, **Restart…** and **Shut down…**, five people who can wake them, confirmation the machine actually came up, and schedules that live here, retry and report. Pro is a business — twenty machines grouped into sites, twenty-five people with roles, batch actions across a site, and wake links for someone with no account at all.", "cta": "Compare the plans", "href": "#pricing" } ], "boundary": "The boundary is a service, not a feature list. If we ever move a device capability behind a subscription, we will have broken the promise this paragraph is making." }, "compat": { "eyebrow": "Before you buy", "title": "Will it work on my PC?", "lead": "Usually — and the answer depends far more on your PC than on us. At most seven questions, no email address, and you get the exact click-path for your operating system at the end.", "start": "Start the check", "restart": "Start again", "back": "Back", "print": "Print this checklist", "printed": "Printed checklist for {{brand.name}}", "progress": "Question {{n}} of {{total}}", "progressLabel": "Compatibility check progress", "resultTitle": "Your result", "checklistTitle": "Your checklist", "checklistLead": "Work through these in order. The click-paths are for the operating system you told us about.", "answersTitle": "What you told us", "questions": [ { "id": "link", "q": "How is the PC you want to wake connected to your router?", "help": "This is the single biggest factor in whether Wake-on-LAN works at all.", "options": [ { "v": "wired", "label": "Ethernet cable", "note": "Best case. This is what Wake-on-LAN was designed for." }, { "v": "wifi", "label": "Wi-Fi only", "note": "Possible, but genuinely best-effort. We will explain what to expect." }, { "v": "both", "label": "Both — it has a cable and Wi-Fi", "note": "We will target the wired adapter, which is the reliable one." } ] }, { "id": "os", "q": "Which operating system does it run?", "help": "The settings that matter, and where they hide, differ by OS.", "options": [ { "v": "win", "label": "Windows 11 or Windows 10" }, { "v": "macintel", "label": "macOS on an Intel Mac" }, { "v": "macarm", "label": "macOS on Apple silicon" }, { "v": "linux", "label": "Linux" } ] }, { "id": "state", "q": "How will the machine be when you want to wake it?", "help": "Waking from sleep and waking from a full shutdown are different problems with different failure modes.", "options": [ { "v": "sleep", "label": "Asleep", "note": "Suspend-to-RAM, or Modern Standby on newer laptops." }, { "v": "hibernate", "label": "Hibernated", "note": "Suspend-to-disk. Behaves like a shutdown as far as the network card is concerned." }, { "v": "off", "label": "Fully shut down", "note": "Harder — the board has to keep the network card powered while it is off." } ] }, { "id": "nic", "showIf": { "os": [ "win" ] }, "q": "Does your network adapter list \"Wake on Magic Packet\"?", "help": "Device Manager, then Network adapters, then your adapter, then the Advanced tab. If you have not looked, say so — we will include the steps.", "options": [ { "v": "yes", "label": "Yes, and it is enabled" }, { "v": "present", "label": "It is there, but disabled or I am not sure" }, { "v": "no", "label": "No such setting exists", "note": "Some cheap USB adapters genuinely cannot do this." }, { "v": "unsure", "label": "I have not looked" } ] }, { "id": "faststart", "showIf": { "os": [ "win" ] }, "q": "Is Windows fast startup switched on?", "help": "It is on by default. It turns \"shut down\" into a partial hibernation, and on most machines that silently disarms Wake-on-LAN.", "options": [ { "v": "off", "label": "Off — I have already disabled it" }, { "v": "on", "label": "On" }, { "v": "unsure", "label": "I do not know", "note": "Assume on. It is the default." } ] }, { "id": "bios", "showIf": { "os": [ "win", "linux" ] }, "q": "Is Wake-on-LAN enabled in the BIOS or UEFI?", "help": "Usually under Power Management, and often called \"Wake on PCI-E\", \"Power On By PCI-E\" or \"Resume by LAN\".", "options": [ { "v": "yes", "label": "Yes, it is enabled" }, { "v": "no", "label": "No, or I found it and it was off" }, { "v": "unsure", "label": "I have not checked" }, { "v": "nooption", "label": "There is no such option", "note": "Common on laptops, where it is often tied to a docking or \"wake on LAN\" setting instead." } ] }, { "id": "network", "q": "Will the dongle be on the same network as the PC?", "help": "Not the same room — the same network. Guest SSIDs and \"client isolation\" put devices on segments that cannot broadcast to each other, and that stops this dead.", "options": [ { "v": "same", "label": "Yes, same router, same main network" }, { "v": "guest", "label": "It would be on a guest network", "note": "This will not work until you change it." }, { "v": "isolated", "label": "My router has client or AP isolation switched on", "note": "This will not work until you change it." }, { "v": "unsure", "label": "I am not sure" } ] } ], "verdicts": { "blocked": { "tone": "blocked", "badge": "Fix the network first", "title": "This will not work as described until the network changes", "body": "A magic packet is a broadcast, and the network you described deliberately stops devices broadcasting to each other. Nothing about the dongle can work around that — no product in this category can. The fix is usually one setting in your router, and it is the first item on your checklist." }, "likely": { "tone": "good", "badge": "Very likely to work", "title": "Everything you told us points the right way", "body": "A wired target, with the adapter and firmware settings already in place, is the case Wake-on-LAN was designed for. Work through the checklist to confirm, and keep it for when you set the dongle up." }, "changes": { "tone": "warn", "badge": "Needs {{n}} change before it will work", "badgePlural": "Needs {{n}} changes before it will work", "title": "Very likely to work once you have changed a couple of settings", "body": "None of these are difficult and none of them cost anything — they are the settings that ship disabled on most machines. The click-path for each one is below." }, "wifi": { "tone": "warn", "badge": "Wi-Fi only — best-effort", "title": "This may work — follow the guided steps below to find out", "body": "Waking a Wi-Fi-only machine means WoWLAN, and WoWLAN is unreliable in ways that are outside anyone's control: support varies by adapter and driver, group-key rekeying interferes with it, and Modern Standby complicates it further. Every magic-packet product has this limitation. If you can run a cable to this machine, do that instead and the answer becomes a confident yes." }, "macoff": { "tone": "warn", "badge": "Works from sleep, not from off", "title": "A Mac will not wake from a full shutdown", "body": "macOS supports \"Wake for network access\" from sleep, and Apple silicon Macs handle this well over Ethernet. None of them will start from a full shutdown via Wake-on-LAN, because the hardware does not keep the network interface armed in that state. If you put the Mac to sleep instead of shutting it down, this works." } }, "tasks": { "router-isolation": { "title": "Turn off client isolation, or move the dongle to the main network", "why": "Client isolation, AP isolation and guest SSIDs all exist to stop devices on the network talking to each other. That includes broadcasts, which is exactly what a magic packet is.", "steps": [ "Open your router's admin page — usually `192.168.0.1` or `192.168.1.1`.", "Look under Wireless, Wireless Advanced, or Guest Network for a setting called **AP Isolation**, **Client Isolation**, **Wireless Isolation** or **Guest network isolation**.", "Either switch it off for the network the dongle will join, or put both the dongle and the PC on your main SSID instead of the guest one.", "If your router runs separate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz SSIDs, that is fine — they are normally the same segment. Guest SSIDs are not." ] }, "router-check": { "title": "Check your router is not isolating clients", "why": "It is worth two minutes now rather than an hour of confusion later. Most consumer routers have this off by default, but mesh systems and ISP-supplied boxes vary.", "steps": [ "Open your router's admin page — usually `192.168.0.1` or `192.168.1.1`.", "Under Wireless or Guest Network, confirm **AP Isolation** / **Client Isolation** is off for your main network.", "Confirm you are not planning to plug the dongle into a guest SSID.", "If your setup uses VLANs, put the dongle in the same VLAN as the PC." ] }, "bios-wol": { "title": "Enable Wake-on-LAN in the BIOS or UEFI", "why": "This is what keeps the network card powered while the machine is off or asleep. On most boards it ships disabled, and on many it is disabled again by the energy-saving option below.", "steps": [ "Restart and press `Del`, `F2`, or `F10` at the boot logo to enter setup — the key is usually shown on screen.", "Find the power section. It is called **Power Management**, **APM Configuration**, or lives under **Advanced**.", "Enable whichever of these your board offers: **Wake on PCI-E**, **Power On By PCI-E/PCI**, **Resume by LAN**, **Wake on LAN**.", "Disable **ErP Ready** or **EuP 2013** if present. It cuts standby power to the network card, which defeats all of the above.", "Save and exit." ] }, "bios-none": { "title": "Check the manufacturer's power settings instead", "why": "Many laptops do not expose Wake-on-LAN in the BIOS at all. It is usually there under a different name, or handled by a vendor utility.", "steps": [ "In BIOS setup, look for **Wake on LAN**, **Wake on Dock**, or **Deep Sleep Control** — disabling deep sleep is often what unblocks it.", "On Lenovo, check *Config, Network, Wake on LAN*. On Dell, check *Power Management, Wake on LAN/WLAN*. On HP, check *Advanced, Built-in Device Options*.", "If the machine only wakes when docked, the dock's Ethernet MAC is the one to give the dongle, not the laptop's." ] }, "win-nic-magic": { "title": "Enable \"Wake on Magic Packet\" on the network adapter", "why": "This is the setting that tells the network card to look for magic packets while the machine is asleep. Windows ships it enabled on some drivers and disabled on others.", "steps": [ "Press `Windows`+`X` and choose **Device Manager**.", "Expand **Network adapters** and double-click your Ethernet adapter.", "Open the **Advanced** tab and find **Wake on Magic Packet**. Set it to **Enabled**.", "Some drivers also have **Wake on Pattern Match** — leave it off, it causes spurious wakes. Some have **Shutdown Wake-On-Lan** or **Wake on LAN after shutdown**; enable that too if you plan to wake from a full shutdown." ] }, "win-nic-missing": { "title": "Check whether this adapter can do Wake-on-LAN at all", "why": "You told us the setting is not there. On a built-in Intel or Realtek adapter it almost always is, under a slightly different name. On a cheap USB-to-Ethernet dongle it may genuinely be absent.", "steps": [ "In Device Manager, open the adapter's **Advanced** tab and look for anything containing *Wake*: **Wake on Magic Packet**, **Wake From Shutdown**, **WOL & Shutdown Link Speed**.", "If there is nothing, update the driver from the adapter manufacturer's site rather than Windows Update — the Microsoft-supplied driver often omits these settings.", "If it is a USB adapter and still shows nothing, it cannot do this. A £10 PCIe or a different USB adapter with a Realtek RTL8153 chipset will." ] }, "win-nic-power": { "title": "Allow the adapter to wake the computer", "why": "Separate from the Advanced tab, and easy to miss. Windows will otherwise ignore the wake even when the card sees the packet.", "steps": [ "Same adapter properties dialog, **Power Management** tab.", "Tick **Allow this device to wake the computer**.", "Tick **Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer** — this prevents the machine waking up every time something broadcasts on your network.", "Leave **Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power** ticked; it does not interfere." ] }, "win-faststart": { "title": "Turn off Windows fast startup", "why": "Fast startup makes \"shut down\" a partial hibernation rather than a real shutdown. In that state most machines put the network card into a mode where it will not wake. This is the single most common reason Wake-on-LAN appears to be broken.", "steps": [ "Open **Control Panel**, then *Hardware and Sound*, then **Power Options**.", "Click **Choose what the power buttons do**.", "Click **Change settings that are currently unavailable**.", "Untick **Turn on fast startup (recommended)** and save.", "Alternatively, run `powercfg /h off` in an Administrator terminal — but note that this disables hibernation entirely." ] }, "win-mac": { "title": "Find the MAC address to give the dongle", "why": "The magic packet is addressed to a specific network card. Give it the wrong one — the Wi-Fi adapter instead of the Ethernet one, or a virtual adapter from a VM — and nothing happens.", "steps": [ "Open a terminal and run `getmac /v`.", "Find the row whose Connection Name is your **Ethernet** adapter, and read the Physical Address column.", "It looks like `A1:B2:C3:D4:E5:F6`. Ignore anything belonging to VirtualBox, VMware, Hyper-V, WSL or a VPN.", "If you prefer a GUI: *Settings, Network & internet, Ethernet*, then read **Physical address (MAC)**." ] }, "win-mac-wifi": { "title": "Find the Wi-Fi adapter's MAC address", "why": "Wi-Fi adapters usually have a different MAC from the Ethernet port on the same machine, and Windows may also be randomising it.", "steps": [ "Run `getmac /v` and read the row for your **Wi-Fi** adapter.", "Go to *Settings, Network & internet, Wi-Fi*, open your network's properties and set **Random hardware addresses** to **Off**. If Windows changes the MAC, the dongle will be addressing a card that no longer answers to it.", "Re-read the MAC after turning randomisation off — it will have changed back to the hardware one." ] }, "mac-wake": { "title": "Turn on \"Wake for network access\"", "why": "This is macOS's name for Wake-on-LAN. Without it the Mac ignores magic packets entirely.", "steps": [ "On a desktop Mac: *System Settings, Energy Saver*, and enable **Wake for network access**.", "On a MacBook: *System Settings, Battery, Options*, and set **Wake for network access** to **Only on power adapter** or **Always**.", "On older macOS: *System Preferences, Energy Saver*, tick **Wake for Wi-Fi network access**.", "Keep the Mac plugged into mains. On battery, macOS will not honour this." ] }, "mac-mac": { "title": "Find the MAC address to give the dongle", "why": "You want the hardware address of the interface the Mac will be listening on while asleep.", "steps": [ "Open *System Settings, Network*, select **Ethernet**, click **Details**, then **Hardware**, and read the MAC address.", "Or run `ifconfig en0 | grep ether` in Terminal. `en0` is usually Wi-Fi on laptops and Ethernet on desktops — check with `networksetup -listallhardwareports`.", "Use the Ethernet interface's address if the Mac is wired." ] }, "mac-arm-note": { "title": "Know what Apple silicon will and will not do", "why": "Apple silicon Macs handle wake-from-sleep over Ethernet well, and do not support waking from a full shutdown at all.", "steps": [ "Use **Sleep** rather than **Shut Down** on this machine.", "Over Ethernet, including a Thunderbolt dock's Ethernet port, wake from sleep is reliable.", "Over Wi-Fi, the Mac relies on a Bonjour sleep proxy on the network; it often works and is not something you can configure or depend on." ] }, "linux-ethtool": { "title": "Arm the network card with ethtool", "why": "Most distributions leave Wake-on-LAN disabled on the interface even when the BIOS has it enabled.", "steps": [ "Find the interface name with `ip link show`.", "Check what it supports: `sudo ethtool enp3s0 | grep -i wake`. You want `Supports Wake-on` to include `g`.", "Arm it: `sudo ethtool -s enp3s0 wol g`.", "Confirm with `sudo ethtool enp3s0 | grep -i wake` — `Wake-on` should now read `g`." ] }, "linux-persist": { "title": "Make it survive a reboot", "why": "`ethtool -s` does not persist. Without this it works until the next restart and then silently stops.", "steps": [ "With NetworkManager: `nmcli connection modify \"Wired connection 1\" 802-3-ethernet.wake-on-lan magic`.", "With systemd-networkd, add `WakeOnLan=magic` to the `[Link]` section of your `.link` file in `/etc/systemd/network/`.", "Otherwise create a systemd unit that runs `ethtool -s wol g` at boot, `After=network.target`.", "Reboot and re-check with `sudo ethtool | grep -i wake` before you trust it." ] }, "linux-mac": { "title": "Find the MAC address to give the dongle", "why": "Straightforward, but pick the physical interface rather than a bridge or a container network.", "steps": [ "Run `ip link show`.", "Read the `link/ether` value under your physical interface — typically `enp3s0` or `eth0`.", "Ignore `docker0`, `virbr0`, `br-*` and anything created by a VPN." ] }, "wifi-expect": { "title": "Know what to expect from a Wi-Fi-only target", "why": "We would rather set this expectation now than in a support ticket. This is the real picture.", "steps": [ "Check the adapter actually claims support: on Windows, run `Get-NetAdapterPowerManagement` and read **WakeOnMagicPacket** (the Advanced tab's Wake on Magic Packet is a wired-NIC setting and is usually absent on Wi-Fi); on Linux, `iw phy info` and read the whole WoWLAN block — `grep -A5` cuts it off, and the phy comes from `/sys/class/net//phy80211/name`, not always `phy0`.", "Expect it to fail after the access point rekeys the group key — typically every hour on consumer routers, and there is no fix from our side.", "Expect Modern Standby laptops to behave inconsistently, because the OS, not the card, decides what counts as a wake source.", "If this machine matters to you, run a cable. A £5 Ethernet cable converts this from best-effort to reliable." ] }, "s5-note": { "title": "Understand why \"off\" is harder than \"asleep\"", "why": "You said the machine will be fully shut down. That is the hardest case, and it is worth knowing what has to be true.", "steps": [ "Asleep, the network card is still powered by the +5 V standby rail and armed. This nearly always works once the settings above are right.", "Shut down, the board has to keep feeding that rail. That is what the BIOS **Wake on PCI-E** option controls, and what **ErP Ready** switches off.", "Some drivers need a separate **Wake on LAN after shutdown** or **Shutdown Wake-On-Lan** setting on the adapter's Advanced tab.", "If you cannot get shutdown wake working, sleep is a perfectly good target — a sleeping desktop draws two to five watts." ] }, "hibernate-note": { "title": "Treat hibernation like a shutdown", "why": "You said the machine will be hibernated. From the network card's point of view this is the same as being off.", "steps": [ "Everything on the shutdown path applies: BIOS Wake on PCI-E, ErP disabled, and any \"wake after shutdown\" adapter setting.", "On Windows, verify with `powercfg /lastwake` after a successful wake to confirm the network adapter is credited as the wake source.", "If it proves unreliable, switch the machine to sleep instead. The extra draw is small and the wake is dependable." ] }, "dongle-place": { "title": "Place the dongle on the same network segment", "why": "This is the one thing that is about our device rather than yours. It only needs mains power and Wi-Fi — but it must be able to broadcast to the target.", "steps": [ "Plug it into any mains socket within decent Wi-Fi range of your router.", "Join it to your **main** SSID, not a guest one.", "It does not need to be near the PC, on the same floor, or plugged into anything else.", "It draws about half a watt, so leaving it powered permanently is the intended use." ] }, "verify": { "title": "Verify before you rely on it", "why": "Everything above is theory until a machine actually comes back up. Test it once while you are stood next to it.", "steps": [ "Put the machine into the state you actually intend to use — asleep, hibernated, or off.", "Wait two minutes. Some adapters take a moment to enter their armed state, and testing instantly hides failures.", "Send a wake from the dashboard and watch the machine.", "On Windows, confirm what woke it with `powercfg /lastwake` — you want to see the network adapter named there." ] } }, "summaryLabels": { "link": "Connection", "os": "Operating system", "state": "Target state", "nic": "Magic packet setting", "faststart": "Fast startup", "bios": "BIOS Wake-on-LAN", "network": "Dongle network" }, "footnote": "This check makes no network requests and stores nothing. It runs entirely in your browser, and the answers disappear when you close the tab." }, "kit": { "eyebrow": "What paying adds", "title": "The free plan wakes your PC. The paid plans run everything around it — power, people, schedules and proof.", "lead": "The free plan is a real product rather than a trial — one machine, unlimited wakes, ten sleeps a calendar month, the dashboard, and its last ten attempts on record. No dongle? The free [agent](/agent) goes on the machine you want to sleep, and on any always-on box — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS, a machine that never sleeps — it is also the emitter, so nothing on this page requires buying hardware. The paid plans are the part our servers do: sign in, pick one, and it is live in a minute. EU readers: the free plan is yours today, and the form below is where to hear first when the paid plans open.", "product": { "name": "The paid plans", "price": "", "priceNote": "The full pricing is below. The free plan stays free either way.", "includes": [ "Sleep it as often as you like: **Sleep** on a machine’s row suspends it in seconds — ten a calendar month on the free plan, unmetered here — and **Restart…** and **Shut down…** come with it, from the dashboard or the API. Waking it again still takes another emitter — an agent that is asleep cannot hear anything", "Hold it awake while the work runs: **Keep awake…** on a machine’s row keeps it up for a window you name — an hour, a day — and it drops back to sleep by itself when the window ends and nothing is running. The machine stops being something you have to remember to switch off", "Did it actually come up? — we probe the machine after the packet goes out and tell you yes or no. Nothing in this category can answer that, and a voice assistant structurally cannot.", "Wake, then connect: store a connect link on a machine — rdp://, vnc://, ssh://, AnyDesk, whatever you use — and the moment confirmation reports it up, the dashboard offers it as a Connect button. Wake links carry it too, so the person you gave a URL taps Wake and then taps straight into the machine", "Schedules that live in your account — wakes AND, through the agent, sleep, restart and shutdown, so \"wake at eight, sleep at seven\" is two rows on one page. They retry when one does not land, they can report a failure to a webhook, and every firing is on your history page", "The rung below all of that: hard power cycling through a certified power switch — when a machine is so hung that no packet and no software can reach it, cut and restore its mains from the dashboard. The ladder tries a graceful shutdown first, and the hard cut is the backstop, never the routine", "Results in your pocket: install the dashboard as an app on your phone and the paid plans push the outcome — confirmed up, failed and why, a power action landing, an emitter going silent — with the tab long closed", "A native Home Assistant integration: your machines arrive as devices — wake and power buttons, a machine-is-up sensor, a wake-result event for automations — installable today through HACS as a custom repository", "People, with their own sign-ins: share your machines with five others on Plus, twenty-five on Pro with roles — wake, wake and power off, manage, admin — so switching a machine off is granted rather than assumed", "More machines — five on Plus, twenty on Pro — because the free plan deliberately covers one", "Sites on Pro: label machines by where they live, then wake or sleep a whole site at once when that is useful", "Wake links on Pro: a revocable URL that wakes one machine, for someone with no account at all — and deliberately nothing more than wakes", "More emitters on Pro — dongles or agents — which is how you reach a machine on a network segment the first one cannot broadcast to", "The REST API on both paid plans; webhooks and event history on Pro", "A longer record: thirty days of attempts on Plus, twelve months on Pro — the free plan keeps its last ten", "Email support from the person who wrote the firmware" ], "notIncluded": "None of this changes what the device is allowed to do. The firmware is the same on every plan, the protocol is public, and self-hosting the relay gets you all of it for nothing — that boundary is not going to move. Nor is the other one: waking from the dashboard with an emitter of your own — dongle or agent — needs no Echo and no Amazon anywhere in the path, and that is true on the free plan too.", "availabilityTitle": "Open almost everywhere. The EU is next.", "availability": "Sign in and upgrade from your account page — billed yearly, cancel any time. We are looking at bringing the paid plans to the EU, and the free plan is fully usable there today. Leave your address and you will be the first to hear the day they open — one message, no list, no marketing.", "notifyEmail": "Your email", "notifyCountry": "Where are you?", "notifyCountryHelp": "It decides which currency and tax rules apply, and which market opens first.", "ctaReserve": "Tell me when my market opens", "notifyDone": "Noted — we will email you once the paid tiers open for {{country}}. The free tier is ready now.", "notifyFailed": "That did not save. Try again in a moment.", "ctaBuy": "Add to basket", "ctaBuild": "The case, the firmware and the bill of materials are all in the repo — you need nothing from us to start" } }, "ecosystem": { "eyebrow": "Ecosystem", "title": "Ways to reach a machine", "lead": "The free agent on the machine is what sleeps it, holds it awake while it is in use and puts it back. An emitter — the same agent on a box you already leave on, or a dongle you build — does the other job: it puts the magic packet on your network. Everything below is a different way of telling them to do those things.", "badges": { "$note": "The 'api' badge ('Via the API') left with the rest_command Home Assistant card, its only wearer — G4's native integration wears 'now'. 'dev' stays although currently unworn, ready for the next feature announced before it ships. The explanatory paragraph about badge meanings left 2026-08-18 (everything wears 'now' since certification landed); the badges speak for themselves.", "now": "Available now", "dev": "Planned", "cert": "In certification" }, "items": [ { "$note": "Retold for G3+G4.5 (2026-08-09): the dashboard is machine-centric now and installs as an app with push. The presence sentence is split by how we can honestly know — an agent's live connection versus a dated last-seen — and the push sentence must keep its plan attribution: a free push says the wake was SENT; knowing it WORKED is the paid plans' probe. home-copy.test.mjs holds every push claim in the catalogue to that split.", "title": "Web dashboard", "badge": "now", "body": "One card per machine, with its buttons and its presence — live where an agent is connected, last-seen and dated where not. Works on a phone without installing anything, on every tier; install it as an app and the result of a wake arrives as a notification with the tab long closed — on the paid plans, that includes whether the machine actually came up rather than just that the packet went out.", "detail": "Magic-link sign-in, no password to forget." }, { "$note": "Static 'now' rather than gated: agent_live flipped on 2026-08-08 and the builds are published. /api/flags deliberately answers with exactly two flags (flags.test.mjs pins the shape), and withdrawing the agent would be a deploy that also unpublishes the builds — a build-time fact, not a runtime one. The detail stopped saying 'Downloads' in the funnel pass (2026-08-10): /agent no longer serves a download table — it funnels to the signed-in dashboard, with the direct URLs documented in the open repository. The self-wake limit is deliberately NOT restated here (Philip, 2026-08-09): its enforced homes are the agent page and the FAQ, which home-copy.test.mjs asserts.", "title": "The agent", "badge": "now", "body": "A free download — Windows, macOS, Linux, ARM — that turns a machine you already leave on into an emitter, exactly like a dongle but with no hardware to buy. On the paid plans it is also the other half of the power button: sleep, restart and shut down the machine it runs on, from the dashboard or the API.", "detail": "[Details and how to install it](/agent)." }, { "title": "REST API and webhooks", "badge": "now", "body": "A token, a POST, and a wake goes out. Webhooks fire on wake sent, wake confirmed, power actions, and an emitter going online or offline, so you can wire this into whatever you already run.", "detail": "The API is on the paid plans; webhooks on Pro." }, { "title": "Scheduled wakes", "badge": "now", "body": "Wakes on a cron-shaped schedule, held in your account — and on the paid plans a schedule can equally sleep, restart or shut down a machine running the agent, so \"wake at eight, sleep at seven\" is two rows on one page. They retry when one does not land, they can tell a webhook that it failed, and every firing lands on your history page — which is the difference between a schedule and a timer firing into the dark.", "detail": "Paid plans. Alexa Routines can be set up like schedules — what they cannot do is confirm the machine actually woke." }, { "title": "Self-hosted relay", "badge": "now", "body": "The reference relay is in the repository today, AGPL-3.0, single-tenant, and about five minutes to stand up. Point the dongle at it and we are entirely out of the loop.", "detail": "Node and `ws`. No database required." }, { "$note": "Flipped from the rest_command YAML card when G4 shipped the native integration (2026-08-09). The integration is PUBLIC and installable today, but only as a HACS CUSTOM repository — the default-listing review is someone else's queue, exactly like the Alexa badge. So the claim is licensed in halves: home-copy.test.mjs lets any copy name the integration only while the same string carries the 'HACS' + 'custom repository' install path. The day the default listing lands, say 'in the HACS store', and retire that guard clause in the same commit. The detail's power caveat is the physics rule wearing HA clothes: an automation's sleep button reaches only a machine the agent stands on, through a key allowed to power things.", "title": "Home Assistant", "badge": "now", "body": "A native integration, installable today through HACS as a custom repository — add [the repository](https://github.com/phodgers/roosterwake-homeassistant) and your machines arrive in Home Assistant as devices: a wake button each, sleep, restart and shutdown buttons, a machine-is-up sensor, and a wake-result event your automations can act on — \"when the render box confirms up, start the queue\".", "detail": "It signs in with an API key, so it rides the paid plans. The power buttons appear only where they can actually act: the machine needs the [agent](/agent) on it, and the key needs the power scope." }, { "$note": "G8 (2026-08-10): Siri rides the documented REST API with the reader's own key — a recipe built in Apple's Shortcuts app, not an app or a skill we ship. It sits beside the Alexa card so the two voice stories read together, and their honesty runs opposite ways: Alexa is free on every plan because the reader's own Echo does the broadcasting; a Siri Shortcut authenticates with an API key, and keys come with the paid plans. It must never become a pricing-grid row — home-copy.test.mjs forbids voice as a paid card's own feature, and siri-copy.test.mjs holds this card to naming the API-key gate while conceding the Alexa half out loud.", "title": "Siri Shortcuts", "badge": "now", "body": "\"Hey Siri, wake the studio.\" A Shortcut you build in Apple's Shortcuts app in about two minutes calls our documented REST API — from an iPhone, an Apple Watch, a HomePod or a Mac, with a phrase you choose. It is a recipe rather than an app we ship, and the [step-by-step build](/siri-shortcuts) is documented in full, including the longer variant that has Siri wait for the paid plans' confirmation probe and speak what actually happened.", "detail": "It authenticates with an API key — the same credential any script uses — so it rides the paid plans. Voice with Alexa is a separate route, and stays included on every plan." }, { "title": "Amazon Alexa", "badge": "cert", "body": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC.\" A smart-home skill linked to your account. The skill declares your machine's address to Alexa and **your own Echo broadcasts the wake on your own network** — our servers never touch it, which is exactly why it is free on every plan. Free voice wake is the baseline across this whole category now; what no voice assistant can do is say whether the machine actually came up. That answer takes a probe on your network, which is what wake confirmation on the paid plans is.", "detail": "Built and running on real hardware; with Amazon for certification, so it cannot be enabled from the skill store yet.", "gate": "alexaLive", "live": { "badge": "now", "detail": "Free on every plan, including the free one. [Get the skill on Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), link your account by signing in, and your machines appear by name. Works from the Alexa app wherever you are, and on a timer through an Alexa Routine." } } ] }, "remoteAi": { "$note": "The home page's Remote AI section (T4, 2026-08-30) — a section on the existing page, deliberately not a separate front door; the full persona landing page is a later decision. Three rules. The lead sells the ONE-BUTTON story in a few sentences and hands everything else to the guide, whose path is the single href the section carries — home-copy.test.mjs pins that href to guides.remoteAi.path so the tile cannot point at a page that moved. The facts are the tier matrix's: three free sessions a calendar month is TIERS.free.remoteSessions, unmetered names Plus because remoteSessions is null on exactly the paid rows — the same pin. And the trademark care of the guide applies here in miniature: 'works with' compatibility phrasing, Claude Code named as the tool being used, no endorsement implied.", "eyebrow": "Remote AI", "title": "One button runs Claude Code on it — even when it is asleep", "lead": "Press **Remote AI** on a machine's row: a sleeping PC is woken, held awake for the window you choose, and Claude Code starts headlessly in a folder you registered — **Open in Claude** then hands you the live session on the device in your hand, and ending it lets the machine sleep again. It works with your own Claude Code install and sign-in, on your own Claude plan. The free plan includes ten sessions a month; Plus runs them unmetered. {{brand.name}} is also in the Claude connectors directory — [one click adds it to your Claude account](https://claude.ai/directory/rooster-wake), and then any Claude chat can wake and reach your machines by name.", "cta": "Run Claude Code remotely — the guide" }, "pricing": { "eyebrow": "Pricing", "title": "Free gives you the wake. Paid puts it to work.", "lead": "Every tier speaks the same protocol to the same firmware. Paying changes what our servers will do for you, never what your device is allowed to do — and \"device\" includes the free [agent](/agent): install it on any always-on box and no plan here needs a hardware purchase.", "launchRibbon": "Special launch price", "launchNote": "**Special launch pricing for early users.** Both paid plans are at a launch price while we launch — £{{price.plus}} a year for Plus and £{{price.pro}} for Pro, VAT included, or ${{price.plus}} and ${{price.pro}} outside the UK. It is the price you pay, not a discount off a bigger number, and it may be revised after this first phase. Plans renew automatically each year and you can cancel any time from the billing portal. The free plan is untouched by any of this: it was always free.", "voice": { "$note": "The voice row, in the two states it can honestly have. A tier's features may name it as ['voice', ''] and main.js substitutes whichever of these applies — the skill being published is a fact about Amazon's review queue, read at load time from /api/flags, and not something a deploy should have to carry. It is never a cross: voice is included on every plan, and while the skill is unpublished the row says so rather than pretending either way.", "pending": [ "partial", "Voice wake with Alexa — in certification" ], "live": [ "yes", "Voice wake with Alexa, on every plan" ] }, "voiceNote": { "$note": "What the paid plans add is stated here and it is a SHORT list on purpose. Waking from anywhere, putting a wake on a timer through an Alexa Routine, reading your own recent attempts, and waking with no Amazon in the path are all on the free plan — the first two through Alexa, the last two through an emitter of the reader's own, dongle or agent. Selling any of them as an upgrade would be untrue, and it is the exact untruth this product is most tempted by. The REST API left the free list in R9 (free has no keys), so it now sits in the paid half.", "pending": "Voice wake will be on every plan, free included: the skill declares your machine to Alexa and your own Echo broadcasts the wake on your own network, so it costs us nothing to give away. It is with Amazon for certification and cannot be enabled yet — when it can, this line will say so. Alexa is one way to send a wake and the free plan has the others too: the dashboard, and an emitter of your own — a dongle, or the free agent on a machine you already leave on — with no Amazon anywhere in the path. What the paid plans add is the part our servers do — confirmation the machine actually came up, schedules that live here and retry and report, sleep and shutdown through the agent, more machines and people, the REST API, and email support.", "live": "Voice wake is on every plan, free included: your own Echo broadcasts the wake on your own network, which is why it costs nothing to give away — and why it works from the Alexa app wherever you are, and on a timer through an Alexa Routine. Alexa is one way to send a wake and the free plan has the others too: the dashboard, and an emitter of your own — a dongle, or the free agent on a machine you already leave on — with no Amazon anywhere in the path. What the paid plans add is the part our servers do — confirmation the machine actually came up, schedules that live here and retry and report, sleep and shutdown through the agent, more machines and people, the REST API, and email support." }, "tiers": [ { "id": "free", "name": "Free", "price": "£0", "period": "always", "tagline": "Remote wake, from anywhere, indefinitely.", "cta": "Included with any device", "features": [ [ "yes", "Wake one machine, with a dongle, the free agent, or your own Echo" ], [ "yes", "Web dashboard from any browser" ], [ "yes", "Unlimited wakes" ], [ "yes", "Wake history — the last ten attempts, and why each failed" ], [ "yes", "Magic-link sign-in" ], [ "voice", "" ], [ "no", "Sharing with other people" ], [ "no", "Confirmation that the machine came up" ], [ "no", "Alerts when a scheduled wake here fails, or an emitter goes silent" ], [ "no", "Sleep, restart and shut down, through the free agent" ], [ "no", "Hard power cycle, through a certified power switch" ], [ "no", "Scheduled wakes here, with history and retry" ], [ "no", "REST API" ], [ "no", "Email support" ] ] }, { "id": "plus", "name": "Plus", "price": "£{{price.plus}}", "period": "per year, inc. VAT", "$launchNote": "A paid tier carries `launch: true` to wear the launch-price ribbon, which is how BOTH paid plans get it and the free one never does. The ribbon is not a discount claim: the launch price IS the standing price, printed from the same token checkout charges, and the note under the grid says it may be revised after the launch phase.", "launch": true, "tagline": "For a household with more than one machine.", "featured": true, "cta": "Sign in and subscribe", "ctaHref": "/signin?next={{brand.app}}/account", "features": [ [ "yes", "Wake up to five machines" ], [ "yes", "Web dashboard from any browser" ], [ "yes", "Unlimited wakes" ], [ "yes", "Wake history — every attempt, kept for thirty days" ], [ "yes", "Magic-link sign-in" ], [ "voice", "" ], [ "yes", "Share with up to five people — they wake and sleep machines, you stay in charge" ], [ "yes", "Confirmation that the machine came up — we probe it and tell you" ], [ "yes", "Alerts when a scheduled wake here fails, or an emitter goes silent" ], [ "yes", "Sleep, restart and shut down machines running the free agent" ], [ "yes", "Hard power cycle, through a certified power switch — cut and restore mains when nothing else can reach the machine" ], [ "yes", "Scheduled wakes here — and scheduled sleep and shutdown — with history and retry" ], [ "yes", "REST API" ], [ "yes", "Email support" ] ] }, { "id": "pro", "name": "Pro", "price": "£{{price.pro}}", "period": "per year, inc. VAT", "launch": true, "tagline": "For people wiring this into something else.", "cta": "Sign in and subscribe", "ctaHref": "/signin?next={{brand.app}}/account", "$note": "R10 added the rows R5–R7 shipped — sites with batch actions, wake links — and the power row on every card. The cards must list what shared/tiers.js gates, or the grid undersells the plan it exists to explain. 'Five emitters' rather than 'five dongles': agents count against the same quota, and the dashboard has said Emitters since R9.", "features": [ [ "yes", "Wake up to twenty machines, across five emitters" ], [ "yes", "Web dashboard from any browser" ], [ "yes", "Unlimited wakes" ], [ "yes", "Wake history — every attempt, kept for twelve months" ], [ "yes", "Magic-link sign-in" ], [ "yes", "Two-factor sign-in (TOTP) — included on every plan, listed here because business buyers check for it" ], [ "voice", "" ], [ "yes", "Share with up to twenty-five people, with roles" ], [ "yes", "Confirmation that the machine came up — we probe it and tell you" ], [ "yes", "Alerts when a scheduled wake here fails, or an emitter goes silent" ], [ "yes", "Sleep, restart and shut down machines running the free agent" ], [ "yes", "Hard power cycle, through a certified power switch — cut and restore mains when nothing else can reach the machine" ], [ "yes", "Scheduled wakes here — and scheduled sleep and shutdown — with history and retry" ], [ "yes", "REST API, webhooks and event history" ], [ "yes", "Sites — group machines by place, then wake or sleep a whole site at once" ], [ "yes", "Wake links — a revocable URL that wakes one machine, for someone with no account" ], [ "yes", "Audit export — the full event history as CSV or JSON, ready for the pipeline that watches your fleet" ], [ "yes", "Mass deployment — a silent Windows installer and revocable enrolment tokens that bind a whole fleet, with nobody signing in at the desk" ], [ "yes", "Email support, one working day" ] ] } ], "addons": "Need more? Pro takes add-on slots for both: £{{price.machineSlot}} a year (inc. VAT) per extra machine and £{{price.dongleSlot}} a year (inc. VAT) per extra emitter, from your dashboard. Plus takes emitter slots only — growing past five machines is what Pro is for.", "footnote": "In the rest of the world the plans are ${{price.plus}} and ${{price.pro}} a year, add-on slots ${{price.machineSlot}} and ${{price.dongleSlot}}. Cancel whenever you like; the device keeps working on the free tier, and if you would rather not deal with us at all, point it at your own relay and it keeps every paid capability that does not require a server we run.", "selfhost": "Self-hosting is free and always will be. It is not a downgrade path — it is the same firmware talking the same protocol to a relay you control." }, "oss": { "eyebrow": "Open source", "title": "The device is yours, including the parts that make it work", "lead": "There is no community edition. The firmware in the repository is the firmware our hosted relay speaks to, and the protocol between them is a published contract rather than an implementation detail.", "licence": "Firmware, case and tools are **MIT**. The reference relay is **AGPL-3.0**. The name and logo are not open — you can fork all of it, you just cannot call your fork ours.", "repoCta": "Read the source", "protocolCta": "Read the wire protocol", "stars": "stars", "starsUnavailable": "on GitHub", "selfhostTitle": "Self-host the relay in about five minutes", "selfhostBody": "The reference relay is single-tenant, has no database, and implements the whole protocol including the challenge-response handshake. It is a real implementation, not a demo.", "selfhostNote": "Then point the dongle at your own `wss://` endpoint from the setup page, and we are out of the loop entirely.", "copy": "Copy", "copied": "Copied", "cards": [ { "title": "firmware/", "body": "Pico W and Pico 2 W firmware in C on the pico-sdk. Builds with CMake.", "licence": "MIT" }, { "title": "relay-reference/", "body": "The self-hostable relay. Node and `ws`, no database.", "licence": "AGPL-3.0" }, { "title": "case/", "body": "Snap case as STL, with print notes.", "licence": "MIT" }, { "title": "tools/mkconfig/", "body": "Generate a config UF2 for headless provisioning.", "licence": "MIT" } ] }, "faq": { "eyebrow": "Questions", "title": "The things that actually go wrong", "lead": "Ordered by how often we expect them to come up rather than by how flattering they are.", "items": [ { "$note": "An entry may carry `requires`, naming a flag from /api/flags that must be true for it to appear at all. That is a different question from the ecosystem cards' `gate`, which rewords a card that always appears — an answer about a thing that is not available has nothing to answer, so it is absent rather than reworded.", "q": "Do I need the dongle at all?", "a": "Only for the waking half, and only if nothing else on your network can do it. Sleeping a machine and holding it awake is the free [agent](/agent) on that machine, which is a download rather than a purchase. Waking is the part that needs something on your own network to broadcast the packet, and there are three candidates: a dongle plugged in near your router, the agent installed on a machine you already leave on — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS, a home server — and an Echo you already own, once our Alexa skill is published; the [pricing table](#pricing) above says which of those is true today. If you have an Echo and one machine to wake by voice or from the Alexa app, you will need no hardware from us at all once the skill is live. For everything else — waking from the dashboard or the REST API, the history page, scheduled wakes, confirmation that the machine came up, reaching a machine on a segment your Echo is not on — you need an emitter of your own, and the agent counts: it is a dongle in software, minus the purchase." }, { "q": "What is actually in the free plan?", "a": "One machine, ten sleeps a calendar month through the free [agent](/agent), unlimited wakes, ten Remote AI sessions, the web dashboard, and your last ten wake attempts with the reason any of them failed — recorded when the wake goes through an emitter of yours, a dongle or the agent, so that part needs one rather than only an Echo. The agent holds a machine awake while somebody is using it and lets it go back to sleep ten minutes after the last activity on every plan, this one included. There is no card, no trial clock and no expiry. What it does not include is unmetered sleeps and the **Keep awake…** hold, confirmation that the machine came up, scheduled wakes that live in your account, the REST API, sharing with other people, restart and shutdown, and email support — those are the paid plans, and the [pricing table](#pricing) is the complete list. We would rather you read that list and decide the free plan is enough than sign up for a trial that turns off." }, { "q": "What does wake confirmation actually do?", "a": "After the magic packet goes out, a dongle on the same network segment probes the machine and watches for it answering, and the result goes on your history. So what you get back is \"it came up\" or \"it did not\", rather than \"the packet was sent\" — which is all Wake-on-LAN can tell you by itself, because the protocol has no acknowledgement of any kind. It is also the one thing a voice assistant structurally cannot do: Alexa knows it broadcast something on your network, and nothing whatsoever after that." }, { "$note": "G2 (2026-08-09). Two claims this answer must never outgrow: the button appears only where the product genuinely knows or honestly hedges (confirmation says 'is up'; a wake link says 'once it is up', because a link's wake is not probed), and the connection itself is never ours — we launch the owner's own client, we do not proxy anything. The scheme list is shared/connect-url.js's allow-list; if that list changes, this answer changes with it.", "q": "Can it connect me after it wakes?", "a": "It can hand you over, yes. Put a connect link on any machine — a remote-desktop address, an `ssh://` host or `vnc://studio`, AnyDesk, Parsec, RustDesk, Moonlight, or a plain URL like a LAN dashboard — and the moment wake confirmation reports the machine up, the dashboard offers a Connect button that opens it. A wake link carries it too: whoever you gave the URL taps Wake, and the same page offers the connection once the machine is up. One grammar worth knowing: Microsoft's Remote Desktop apps refuse a bare `rdp://name` — they want their attribute form with the inner colons encoded, `rdp://full%20address=s%3A192.168.1.20%3A3389` (the raw-colon form in Microsoft's own docs fails Safari's URL parsing, and home networks usually need the IP rather than the machine's name). And two limits. The connection itself is not ours — the button launches whatever client the link names, so that client still has to be installed and able to reach the machine. And storing the link is free on every plan, but the button appears when something can say the machine is up, and that confirmation is a paid feature." }, { "q": "What happens if Amazon changes something?", "a": "The voice route stops and nothing else does. That is a rule we wrote into the code rather than a hope: no paid feature is allowed to depend on Amazon's side of the line. Waking from the dashboard, the REST API, a webhook or a schedule goes through an emitter you own and a relay we run, with no Amazon anywhere in the path — and the free plan's dashboard wake uses that same path." }, { "$note": "G8 (2026-08-10). Siri is answered as a recipe, not a product: the Shortcut is the reader's own automation against the documented API, so the honest gate to name is the API key — never voice itself, which stays free on every plan through Alexa. The answer must keep both halves, or it starts selling voice as an upgrade, which is the exact falsehood the accuracy tests exist to stop.", "q": "Can I wake it with Siri?", "a": "Yes — through Apple's Shortcuts app, as a recipe rather than an app we ship. A Shortcut you build in about two minutes calls the REST API with one of your API keys, and its name becomes the phrase: call it \"Wake the studio\" and that is what you say to your iPhone, Apple Watch or HomePod. Because the credential is an API key, it rides the paid plans — unlike voice with Alexa, which is included on every plan. The [step-by-step recipe](/siri-shortcuts) covers the plain wake, the failures you will actually hit, and the longer build where Siri waits for the confirmation probe and speaks the answer." }, { "q": "What does \"special launch price\" mean?", "a": "That the current prices — £{{price.plus}} a year for Plus and £{{price.pro}} for Pro, VAT included, or ${{price.plus}} and ${{price.pro}} outside the UK — are launch pricing for early users, and may be revised after this first launch phase. It is the price you pay at checkout, not a discount off a bigger number. Plans renew automatically each year, and you can cancel any time from the billing portal before a renewal is charged." }, { "$note": "G5 (2026-08-09): the closing reframe is deliberate. 'No port forwarding' is claimed verbatim by every serious service in the category now, so an answer that stopped at 'no' would be leaning on a differentiator that stopped differentiating. The claim stays; the answer hands the reader the question that actually separates products, which is ours to win.", "q": "Do I need to forward a port?", "a": "No, and you should not. The dongle opens an outbound TLS WebSocket to the relay and keeps it open. Your router treats that like any other outbound connection. Nothing on your network becomes reachable from the internet because you plugged this in. One note: every serious product in this category can say this now, so treat \"no port forwarding\" as the baseline rather than the selling point. The question that actually separates them is what happens after the packet goes out — whether anything checks the machine came up, and whether anyone can tell you why it did not." }, { "q": "Does it matter if my home IP address changes?", "a": "No. Nothing ever connects *to* your network, so nothing needs to know where it is. The dongle re-establishes its outbound connection after a reconnect and carries on. You do not need dynamic DNS, a static IP, or a VPN." }, { "q": "My router has client isolation or a guest network. Will this work?", "a": "Yes — the answer is placement. Client isolation, AP isolation and guest SSIDs separate devices on purpose, and a magic packet is a broadcast, so it has to be sent from inside the same segment as the machine it wakes. Usually that just means putting the dongle on your main SSID, in the same VLAN as the target. And where machines deliberately live behind an isolated segment, put an emitter inside that segment too — an additional dongle, or the free agent on an always-on box there. A wake fans out across all your emitters, so whichever one shares the machine's segment carries it." }, { "q": "How do I find the right MAC address?", "a": "On Windows, run `getmac /v` and take the Physical Address of the **Ethernet** row — not a VirtualBox, VMware, Hyper-V, WSL or VPN adapter. On macOS, *System Settings, Network, Ethernet, Details, Hardware*, or `ifconfig en0 | grep ether`. On Linux, `ip link show` and read `link/ether` off the physical interface. Give the dongle the address of the card the machine will be listening on while asleep — if it is wired, that is the Ethernet one, even if Wi-Fi is also enabled." }, { "q": "It is not waking, and I have checked everything. What is it?", "a": "In our experience, in this order: Windows fast startup, the adapter's **Allow this device to wake the computer** checkbox, a BIOS **Wake on PCI-E** setting that was never enabled, and the wrong MAC address. Run the [compatibility check](#checker) — it produces the click-path for each of these on your specific OS." }, { "q": "What is Windows fast startup, and why does it break this?", "a": "Fast startup makes \"Shut down\" a partial hibernation instead of a real shutdown, so the machine boots quicker. In that state most network cards end up in a power mode where they will not wake. It is on by default. Turn it off under *Control Panel, Power Options, Choose what the power buttons do, Change settings that are currently unavailable*, and untick **Turn on fast startup**." }, { "q": "What do I set in the BIOS?", "a": "Enable whichever your board calls it: **Wake on PCI-E**, **Power On By PCI-E/PCI**, **Resume by LAN** or **Wake on LAN**. Then disable **ErP Ready** or **EuP 2013** if it is there — that option cuts standby power to the network card and quietly undoes everything else you just enabled." }, { "q": "Why does waking from a full shutdown behave differently from waking from sleep?", "a": "Asleep, the network card is powered by the standby rail and already armed, so it just works once the settings are right. Fully off, the motherboard has to keep feeding that rail while the system is down, which is exactly what the BIOS Wake-on-LAN option controls. Some drivers additionally need a separate **Wake on LAN after shutdown** setting. If you cannot get shutdown wake working, sleep is a fine target — a sleeping desktop draws two to five watts." }, { "q": "My PC is on Wi-Fi, not Ethernet. Will it work?", "a": "Best-effort, and we would rather say so here than in a support ticket. Waking over Wi-Fi means WoWLAN: support varies by adapter and driver, group-key rekeying interferes with it, and Modern Standby complicates it further. We do not promise it. If you can run a cable to the target, do — it turns a maybe into a yes. The dongle itself is Wi-Fi only, and that is fine; it is awake, so none of this applies to it." }, { "$note": "This answer once said we had decided NOT to build an agent. R3 reversed that decision and shipped one, so the answer was rewritten rather than patched — an answer that argued against our own product would be worse than either position. The two boundaries it states are the ones that must survive any future edit: waking never needs software on the target, and an agent cannot wake its own sleeping host.", "q": "Can it turn my PC off as well?", "a": "Yes, and that is the half most of this is about. Not by magic packet — there is no such thing as a sleep packet; Wake-on-LAN is one-way by design. Sleeping a machine means software on the machine itself, and that is what the [agent](/agent) is for: install it and the row gains **Sleep**, ten times a calendar month on the free plan and unmetered on Plus and Pro, which also add **Restart…**, **Shut down…** and the **Keep awake…** hold. The agent holds the machine up while somebody is genuinely using it and lets it go back to sleep ten minutes after the last activity, on every plan. Two boundaries worth knowing. \"Nothing installed on the PC you are waking\" stays true unless you choose otherwise — waking never needs the agent on the target. And an agent cannot wake the machine it runs on: asleep, it is asleep too, so the wake still comes from a dongle or an agent on another machine. That is also why, when you share your account, power is a separate permission from waking — a shutdown can leave a machine stranded in a way a wake never can." }, { "$note": "The physics rule this product must never blur, stated as its own question because it is the first thing a reader of the agent page wonders. home-copy.test.mjs holds every sentence in the catalogue to it.", "q": "Can the agent wake the machine it is installed on?", "a": "No — and nothing could make it: an agent on a sleeping machine is asleep along with it, because software does not run on a machine that is powered down. That is the whole reason Wake-on-LAN is a network protocol rather than a program. The first packet always comes from something that is awake — a dongle, or an agent on a different machine. While its own machine is up, the agent wakes any other machine on the network; and on the paid plans it can put its own machine to sleep, ready for something else to wake." }, { "q": "Can other people wake my machines?", "a": "Yes — by invitation, with their own sign-ins, never by handing yours around. Plus covers a household: up to five people who can wake, and sleep, the machines you choose to share. Pro covers a business: up to twenty-five, each with a role — wake, wake and power off, manage or admin. Powering a machine off is its own rung rather than something waking implies, because shutting a machine down is a bigger thing to hand out than switching it on. Revoking an invitation is instant, and everything anyone does lands in the account's history under their own name." }, { "q": "Can someone wake a machine without having an account?", "a": "On Pro, yes — a wake link: a URL that wakes one machine and does nothing else. Hand it to whoever opens up in the morning; they tap it, the till PC starts, and they never see your dashboard, your machines or your account. The URL itself is the credential, so treat it like a key: when the arrangement ends, revoke it from the machine's page and it stops working immediately. Every use lands in your history under the label you gave the link. Power actions are deliberately unreachable through a link — a URL that could shut a machine down is not a wake button." }, { "q": "Does the dongle need to be near my PC?", "a": "No. It needs mains power, decent Wi-Fi to your router, and to be on the same network segment as the target. Different room, different floor, all fine — a broadcast reaches the whole segment." }, { "q": "What happens to my Wi-Fi password?", "a": "It goes into the device's flash and nowhere else. You enter it locally, over the device's own setup hotspot or by USB. No frame in the protocol carries Wi-Fi credentials in either direction, and the firmware rejects any attempt by a relay to set them. That is a deliberate design decision, and it means compromising a relay — ours or anyone's — does not yield a single Wi-Fi password." }, { "q": "How bad is it if someone steals my device token?", "a": "They could switch your PC on. That is genuinely the whole blast radius: it is irritating, it costs you some electricity, and it could be a first step in a physical intrusion. It grants no access to the woken machine. The token is never transmitted — authentication is a mutual challenge-response — so a hostile relay learns nothing reusable even if you point a device at one. The reasoning is written up in [the protocol]({{brand.repo}}/blob/main/PROTOCOL.md)." }, { "q": "What if you disappear?", "a": "Point the dongle at your own relay from the setup page and carry on. The reference relay is in the repository under AGPL-3.0, it implements the full protocol, and standing it up takes about five minutes: `git clone`, then `docker compose up -d`. That is not a courtesy — the protocol is a published contract precisely so that this is a real option rather than a reassuring sentence." }, { "q": "Why not just use a smart plug?", "a": "As the everyday way to wake a machine, it is the wrong tool: cutting and restoring mains cold-boots the machine rather than resuming it, loses your open applications, and only works if the board is set to power on after a power loss. A magic packet resumes from sleep with everything where you left it. But as the recovery of last resort, a plug is exactly the right tool — which is why the paid plans now drive [certified power switches](/certified-power-switches) directly: when a machine is hung past waking and its agent cannot answer, one press asks for a polite shutdown first, then cuts and restores the feed at the wall. No vendor cloud, no vendor app — your own emitter drives it on your own network, and the same switches run lamps, heaters and other appliances from the dashboard, with live wattage." }, { "q": "Why not run this on a Raspberry Pi I already own?", "a": "Do — that is exactly what the [agent](/agent) is for. It is a free download that turns the Pi into an emitter on your account: the dashboard, the history, the whole product, with no hardware purchase. The trade is the reason the dongle still exists: a Pi 4 draws about 3 W idle against the dongle's 0.5 W, and it is a general-purpose computer that needs updating. If the Pi is running anyway, use the agent; the dongle is for every network where nothing stays on." }, { "$note": "G5 (2026-08-09). The generic-comparison answer: free rivals exist and the reader has their tabs open, so it concedes the free half honestly and leads with the substance the reviewed plans lacked — never with a price, never a named competitor (Philip's standing default; named pages only if he asks — home-copy.test.mjs bans the names). Every claim here is licensed elsewhere: confirmation by the pricing grid, scheduled power by shared/tiers.js powerActions, the HA integration by the HACS-custom-repository rule, push by the paid-attribution rule.", "q": "Free services and Alexa skills wake a PC too. Why pay for this?", "a": "If a voice wake now and then is all you need, use one — ours has a free plan for exactly that reason, and pretending otherwise would be silly. What we did not find in the free and cheap software services we reviewed is everything around the wake — starting with the other direction, since a wake service that cannot put the machine back has done half the job: sleeping a machine from your phone, holding it awake for a window while a long job runs, and letting it go back to sleep on its own ten minutes after the last activity. Then: confirmation that the machine actually came up, with the reason when it did not; schedules that live server-side, retry, and can equally sleep or shut a machine down at seven; other people with their own sign-ins and roles, rather than your password shared around; a wake link for someone with no account at all; a push to your phone with the result — on the paid plans, that the machine is up, not just that a packet went out; a native Home Assistant integration with power buttons, installable through HACS as a custom repository; and open firmware with a self-hostable relay, so none of it depends on us existing. Most of that list is what the paid plans are — the [pricing table](#pricing) says which plan carries what, and the free plan stays free while you decide." }, { "q": "Do I have to pay for anything?", "a": "No. Build the hardware from the repository — a Pico W or Pico 2 W and a printed case — self-host the relay, and you never touch us. Or use our hosted free plan, which also costs nothing and does not expire; the [agent](/agent) is a free download too, and using it as an emitter never costs anything. The subscription buys hosted infrastructure — more machines, confirmation, scheduled wakes, power actions, sharing, webhooks, support — and never unlocks a capability in the firmware." }, { "q": "How do I get support?", "a": "Everything before a purchase is answered on this page and in the [documentation]({{brand.docs}}). Found a bug, or building it yourself from the repository? Open a [GitHub issue]({{brand.repo}}/issues) — they all get read. Subscribers get email support from the Support page in their dashboard, answered within one working day on Pro." } ] }, "finalCta": { "title": "Check it will work before you spend anything", "body": "The compatibility check takes about a minute, asks for no email address, and will tell you plainly if the answer is no — before you have bought a board or spent an evening on it.", "primary": "Run the compatibility check", "secondary": "Read the source" }, "footer": { "tagline": "{{brand.tagline}}", "caveat": "Wake-on-LAN to a Wi-Fi-only target is best-effort and depends on your adapter, driver and router. Wired targets are reliable. Routers with client isolation or guest-network separation will block magic packets regardless of hardware.", "affiliation": "{{brand.name}} is not affiliated with Raspberry Pi Ltd, Amazon, Apple or Google.", "$storeTrademarks": "Required store attributions for the hero badge row. playTrademark is visible; appStoreTrademark is prepped in the markup with `hidden` and flips visible the day Apple approves the iOS app — see the flip note on the badge element in index.html. The wording is each store's required sentence and must not be reworded.", "playTrademark": "Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google LLC.", "appStoreTrademark": "App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.", "groups": [ { "title": "Product", "links": [ { "label": "How it works", "href": "#how" }, { "label": "Compare", "href": "#compare" }, { "label": "Compatibility check", "href": "#checker" }, { "label": "Pricing", "href": "#pricing" }, { "label": "Build your own", "href": "#kit" }, { "label": "Certified power switches", "href": "/certified-power-switches" } ] }, { "title": "Guides", "links": [ { "label": "How to wake a PC remotely", "href": "/wake-a-pc-remotely" }, { "label": "Who uses Wake-on-LAN", "href": "/who-uses-wake-on-lan" }, { "label": "Wake a gaming PC", "href": "/wake-gaming-pc-remotely" }, { "label": "Wake your work PC", "href": "/wake-work-pc-from-home" }, { "label": "Wake-on-LAN for a team", "href": "/wake-on-lan-for-teams" }, { "label": "Patch windows and reboots", "href": "/wake-on-lan-for-patching" }, { "label": "Homelab and NAS", "href": "/wake-on-lan-homelab-nas" }, { "label": "Run Claude Code remotely", "href": "/run-claude-code-remotely" }, { "label": "Wake your home PC from university", "href": "/wake-home-pc-from-university" }, { "label": "Wake a PC for remote play", "href": "/wake-pc-for-remote-play" }, { "label": "Remote desktop to a PC that sleeps", "href": "/remote-desktop-wakes-the-pc" }, { "label": "Wake a Mac remotely", "href": "/wake-a-mac-remotely" }, { "label": "Sleep a Linux box and still SSH in", "href": "/sleep-your-linux-box-and-still-ssh-in" } ] }, { "title": "Developers", "links": [ { "label": "Documentation", "href": "{{brand.docs}}" }, { "label": "Wire protocol", "href": "{{brand.repo}}/blob/main/PROTOCOL.md" }, { "label": "GitHub", "href": "{{brand.repo}}" }, { "label": "Report an issue", "href": "{{brand.repo}}/issues" }, { "label": "Changelog", "href": "{{brand.repo}}/releases" }, { "label": "Self-hosting", "href": "{{brand.repo}}/tree/main/relay-reference" } ] }, { "title": "Company", "links": [ { "label": "Sign in", "href": "{{brand.app}}" }, { "label": "Support", "href": "{{brand.app}}/support" }, { "label": "Status", "href": "/status" }, { "label": "Privacy", "href": "/privacy" }, { "label": "Security", "href": "mailto:{{brand.securityEmail}}" }, { "label": "Trademark", "href": "{{brand.repo}}/blob/main/TRADEMARK.md" }, { "label": "Legal", "href": "mailto:{{brand.legalEmail}}" } ] } ], "legal": "© {{year}} {{brand.legalEntity}}. {{brand.name}} is a trademark of {{brand.legalEntity}}.", "themeLabel": "Theme" }, "auth": { "title": "Sign in — {{brand.name}}", "description": "Sign in to {{brand.name}} with a link sent to your email address.", "heading": "Sign in", "lead": "Enter your email and we will send you a link. There is no password to remember, and none to reset.", "emailLabel": "Email address", "emailPlaceholder": "you@example.com", "submit": "Email me a sign in link", "submitting": "Sending…", "sentHeading": "Check your inbox", "sentBody": "We sent a link to **{{email}}**. It works once and expires in 15 minutes.", "$sentBodyAppNote": "The installed-app variant: an emailed LINK always opens the phone's browser, whose sign-in can never reach the app's own isolated cookie jar — so inside the app the email carries a code alone and this copy leads with typing it.", "sentBodyApp": "We sent a code to **{{email}}**. Type it below to sign in — you are inside the app, and an emailed link would open your browser instead, which cannot sign the app in.", "codeLabel": "Or type the code from the email", "codePlaceholder": "123456", "codeSubmit": "Sign in with code", "codeSubmitting": "Checking…", "codeHint": "The code signs you in right here — for when this page can't be left, like linking {{brand.name}} to another app, or a TV.", "$haveCode": "The first screen's direct code entry (signin.html data-direct-form, js/signin.js bindDirectForm). Apple's reviewer (2026-09-03, iPad, build 13) could not sign in with the standing code: the only code box appeared AFTER 'Email me a sign in link' had sent an email they cannot read, and was labelled as the code from that email. Someone who already holds a code — the standing review code, or one received on another device — needs a box on the first screen that asks for no email first. haveCodeNote must name both sources; haveCodeLabel must not say 'from the email'. errCode is shown for a refused code from EITHER box and must tell a device that filled the box to clear it and type by hand.", "$dialog": "Two surfaces read the step keys in this object — the sign-in page (signin.html, js/signin.js) and the apex header's in-place dialog (js/authdialog.js, since 2026-09-04): the request (heading, lead, emailLabel, submit, submitting, sentHeading, sentBody, sentSpam, sentRetry, privacy, errEmail, errRate, errNetwork), both code boxes (haveCode, haveCodeLabel, haveCodeNote, codeLabel, codePlaceholder, codeSubmit, codeSubmitting, errCode, errCodeRate) and the authenticator step (totpHeading, totpLead, totpLabel, totpPlaceholder, totpSubmit, totpSubmitting, totpRecoveryHint, errTotp, errTotpExpired). A change to any of them changes both; a sentence that only makes sense on one of them belongs in a new key, not in an edit to these.", "haveCode": "Already have a code? Enter it here", "haveCodeLabel": "Your sign-in code", "haveCodeNote": "Six digits — from the email we sent you, or a code you were given.", "errCode": "That code did not match. Type it exactly as given — if your device filled it in, clear the box and type it by hand.", "errCodeRate": "Too many code attempts. Wait a few minutes, or use the emailed link instead.", "$totpNote": "The second factor (G6). One set of keys serves both surfaces that ask for it: the /totp interstitial the emailed link lands on, and the sign-in page's own state after a typed code. Available on every plan; nothing here may mention SSO, which is recorded as out of scope.", "totpTitle": "Two-factor sign-in — {{brand.name}}", "totpHeading": "One more step", "totpLead": "This account has two-factor sign-in turned on. Enter the six-digit code from your authenticator app.", "totpLabel": "Authenticator code", "totpPlaceholder": "123456", "totpSubmit": "Verify and sign in", "totpSubmitting": "Checking…", "totpRecoveryHint": "Lost the phone? A recovery code works here too — each one exactly once.", "errTotp": "That code did not verify. Codes change every 30 seconds — try the one showing now.", "errTotpExpired": "This sign-in has expired. Start again with a fresh email link.", "totpRestart": "Start sign-in again", "sentSpam": "Nothing after a minute? Check your spam folder.", "sentRetry": "Use a different address", "signedInHeading": "You are already signed in", "signedInBody": "Signed in as **{{email}}**.", "$bounced": "Shown INSTEAD of the two lines above when the page we just sent someone to sent them straight back — see checkExistingSession in js/signin.js. It must not repeat 'you are already signed in', because the whole point is that somewhere disagreed; and it must name signing out as the fix, because that is what actually works. No blame is assigned to either surface: we do not know which one was wrong, and a person trying to get to their dashboard does not care.", "bouncedHeading": "That sent you straight back", "bouncedBody": "**{{email}}** is signed in here, but the page you were opening did not accept the session — it may have expired. Signing out and back in fixes it.", "openApp": "Open dashboard", "openAdmin": "Open the admin", "$adminStale": "Shown ABOVE THE ORDINARY FORM (not the signed-in card) when ?next= points at the admin console and /api/auth/check says the session is older than the admin gate accepts — see signin-state.js. It must explain that being signed in is not the problem, name the fresh sign-in as the fix, and never state the exact day limit (the constant lives in shared/auth.js and copy that repeats it drifts).", "adminStale": "You are signed in, but the admin console asks for a more recent sign-in than this one. Confirm your address below — after the fresh sign-in you will land in the admin directly.", "signout": "Sign out", "errLink": "That link has expired or has already been used. Ask for a new one below.", "errEmail": "That does not look like an email address.", "errRate": "That is a lot of links. Wait a few minutes and try again.", "errNetwork": "Could not reach the server. Check your connection and try again.", "back": "Back to {{brand.name}}", "privacy": "We use your address to sign you in and to email you about your own devices. Nothing else.", "signupHeading": "Create a free account", "signupLead": "Enter your email and we will send you a link. There is no password to choose, no card, and the free tier does not expire.", "close": "Close" }, "shop": { "$note": "The catalogue-and-basket page is GONE (2026-08-31): /shop 301s to /dongle-kit, which sends people to buy the three commodity parts themselves — see landing.dongleKit. What remains here is exactly the set of strings the DORMANT checkout and order machinery still reads (checkout.html names shop.basket; js/checkout.js and js/order.js render the totals rows and the two tax notes). Those pages are unlinked and kept in case a real shop ever opens; if one does, the retired page keys live in git history, not here. Do not add page copy back to this object without that decision.", "basket": "Your basket", "subtotal": "Items", "discount": "Discount", "delivery": "Delivery", "deliveryFree": "Free", "vat": "VAT", "total": "Total", "importCharges": "Zero-rated for UK VAT. Import duty and local taxes may be charged when it arrives, and are payable by you — we cannot collect them in advance.", "reverseCharge": "Zero-rated dispatch. VAT is accounted for by you under the reverse charge.", "noShipping": "We do not ship to that country yet.", "quoteFailed": "Could not price the basket. Try again in a moment." }, "checkout": { "title": "Checkout — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Checkout", "lead": "Payment is taken on our card processor's secure page. Card details never touch our servers.", "contact": "Contact", "emailLabel": "Email address", "emailHelp": "Your order confirmation and claim code go here.", "address": "Delivery address", "nameLabel": "Full name", "line1Label": "Address", "line2Label": "Address line 2 (optional)", "cityLabel": "Town or city", "regionLabel": "County or state (optional)", "postcodeLabel": "Postcode", "countryLabel": "Country", "vatLabel": "EU VAT number (optional)", "vatHelp": "If you are VAT-registered in an EU member state, the dispatch is zero-rated. We check it against the EU's VIES service.", "vatChecking": "Checking with VIES…", "vatOk": "Verified. This dispatch is zero-rated.", "vatOkNamed": "Verified — **{{name}}**. This dispatch is zero-rated.", "vatInvalid": "VIES does not recognise that number. Check it, or leave the field blank and we will charge VAT as normal.", "vatMalformed": "That does not look like an EU VAT number. It should start with the two-letter country code, like DE123456789.", "vatUnavailable": "The EU's VAT checking service is not responding, so we cannot verify that number right now. VAT has been charged. Email {{brand.supportEmail}} with your order number and we will refund it once the check goes through.", "vatMismatch": "That number is registered in {{registeredIn}}, but this order is going somewhere else. We can only zero-rate a dispatch to the country of registration — email {{brand.supportEmail}} if that is not right.", "discountLabel": "Discount code (optional)", "pay": "Pay {{amount}}", "paying": "Taking you to the payment page…", "backToBasket": "Back to the basket", "empty": "There is nothing in your basket.", "shopClosed": "The shop is not open yet, so this basket cannot be paid for. Everything else here works — this is what it would have cost.", "cancelled": "Payment was cancelled. Nothing has been charged and your basket is untouched.", "errAddress": "Check this field.", "errFailed": "Could not start the payment. Nothing has been charged." }, "order": { "title": "Your order — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Order {{ref}}", "thanks": "Thank you. Your payment went through and we have your order.", "pending": "This order has not been paid for yet.", "notFound": "We could not find that order. Check the link in your confirmation email.", "statusPending": "Awaiting payment", "statusPaid": "Paid — being packed", "statusFulfilled": "Packed", "statusShipped": "On its way", "statusDelivered": "Delivered", "statusCancelled": "Cancelled", "statusRefunded": "Refunded", "claimHeading": "Your claim code", "claimHeadingPlural": "Your claim codes", "claimBody": "This pairs the dongle with your account. It is printed on the card in the box too.", "claimRedeemed": "Already used", "deliveringTo": "Delivering to", "tracking": "Tracking", "whatNext": "When it arrives, plug it in and open {{brand.setup}}. The claim code above is what pairs it with your account.", "keepLink": "Keep this link — it is how you check on this order without signing in." }, "privacy": { "title": "Privacy — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Privacy", "updatedLabel": "Last updated", "updated": "5 September 2026", "updatedIso": "2026-09-05", "lead": [ "**Who we are.** {{brand.name}} is operated by {{brand.legalEntity}}, registered in Northern Ireland (company number NI051340), 27 Enterprise House, Lisburn. We are the data controller for everything described here. Contact: [{{brand.privacyEmail}}](mailto:{{brand.privacyEmail}}).", "**The short version.** We store your email address, the machines you tell us about (a name and a network adapter address), what your dongles report about themselves, and a history of wake attempts. No third party measures you here: no analytics service, no tracking pixels, no advertising identifiers, and nothing on this site tells another company you visited. We keep one note of our own — which link first brought you to the site — and we don't sell or share data with anyone. Your card details never touch our servers. Most of what we store exists so the product can answer \"did it work?\"." ], "sections": [ { "title": "What we store, and why", "items": [ "**Your email address.** It is your account. We sign you in with a link emailed to you, so we never hold a password. We use it to send the emails you'd expect — sign-in links, receipts, security notices, replies to support requests, and alerts about your own equipment when a scheduled wake fails or a dongle stops reporting in, and one note after you sign up if the account is not yet able to wake anything. Alerts can be switched off on your account page; the rest are how the account works. No marketing list exists.", "**Machines.** The name you give a machine and its network adapter (MAC) address. This is the product: a wake names a machine, and a MAC is what a wake-on-LAN packet is addressed to. MAC addresses identify a network adapter, not a person.", "**Dongles.** Each dongle reports its firmware version, board type, local IP address, Wi-Fi signal strength and when it was last seen. That is what the dashboard shows you and what lets support say something more useful than \"try turning it off and on\".", "**The agent, if you install it.** The agent is our optional program running on a machine of yours, and it reports things a dongle never could: the machine's own name, its operating system and version, the network addresses of its adapters (that is how we know which of your machines it runs on), whether the machine could be woken again after a full shutdown, and a COUNT of signed-in sessions — never who is signed in, and never anything they are doing. Sleep, restart and shutdown commands you send it appear in your history like any other action. Uninstall the agent and it stops reporting; remove it from your account and its record goes with it.", "**Wake history.** One row per wake or power attempt: when, which machine, what triggered it (the dashboard, the API, a schedule, Alexa, a wake link), whether it worked, and the failure detail when it didn't. History is the product's record — it exists so you can see what happened, and so a support conversation can start from facts. How long we keep it depends on the plan: twelve months on Pro, thirty days on Plus, and the ten most recent attempts on the free plan — older rows are deleted outright in a nightly pass, not hidden behind a view limit. Deleting your account deletes all of it at once. (Webhook delivery logs are pruned after 30 days on every plan — they exist only for debugging your own endpoint.)", "**Schedules, API keys, webhooks, shares.** What you configure is what we store. API keys are stored hashed and shown once. Webhook secrets are stored as given, because we sign every delivery with them.", "**Two-factor sign-in, if you turn it on.** The authenticator secret is stored encrypted, and your recovery codes are stored only as hashes — we could not read either back to you if you asked. Turning two-factor off deletes them.", "**Billing.** If you buy a plan on our website, a third-party payment provider handles your card; if you buy it in the app, the app store you bought the app in takes the payment. We store which plan you are on, where it was bought, its renewal date and status, and your country; your card number never reaches us.", "**Support.** If you write to support, we keep the thread — that is how a follow-up works.", "**Cookies, and the one that says where you came from.** Three, all set by us, none shared with anyone. Two are plumbing: the session that keeps you signed in, and the security cookies our sign-in forms need. The third records which link first brought you to the site — a channel name such as `reddit` or `hacker-news`, the referring page, and the page you landed on. It holds nothing that identifies you and no number that could, it is never sent anywhere, and it is read exactly once: if you go on to create an account, that channel name is stored with it. It exists because we write about this product in a lot of places and would otherwise have no way of telling which of them anyone reads. Clear your cookies and it is gone, and nothing stops working.", "**Alexa, if you link it.** Linking the skill stores an authorisation from Amazon that lets us tell Alexa to wake your machines, and our machine list (names and MACs) is shared with Amazon so you can wake them by name. Wakes triggered by Alexa appear in your history like any other. Unlinking the skill in the Alexa app revokes the authorisation; you can also just delete the machines. Amazon's handling of your Alexa account is Amazon's privacy policy, not this one." ] }, { "title": "What we deliberately don't do", "items": [ "No third-party analytics, no tracking pixels, no advertising identifiers, on any page. Nothing here reports your visit to another company, and no profile of you exists anywhere.", "No third-party cookies, ever. The only ones we set are our own three, listed above.", "We never sell data, and we never share it except with the processors below.", "Our dongles never open a port to the internet and we cannot reach into your network: a dongle dials out to us, and the only thing we ever send it is what you asked for." ] }, { "title": "Who processes data for us", "items": [ "**Our hosting provider** — runs the sites, the database and our email. **Your account data is stored in the United Kingdom**, in one place: the pages themselves are served from data centres worldwide so the site loads quickly wherever you are, but the database behind them is not copied out of the UK.", "**A payment provider** — card processing for plans bought on the website.", "**The app store you bought the app in** — payment for a plan bought inside the app. It tells us the plan and its status, never your card.", "**Amazon** — only if you link the Alexa skill, as described above.", "**GitHub** — only if you [open an issue]({{brand.repo}}/issues) there, which is public and under GitHub's terms." ] }, { "title": "Your rights", "body": [ "UK GDPR applies. You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it — email [{{brand.privacyEmail}}](mailto:{{brand.privacyEmail}}) from your account address. Deleting your account removes your machines, schedules, keys, webhooks and history. Wake history is yours: releasing a dongle to a new owner detaches your history from it rather than handing it over. If you are unhappy with how we've handled something, you can complain to the ICO ([ico.org.uk](https://ico.org.uk))." ] }, { "title": "Changes", "body": [ "If this policy changes in a way that matters, signed-in users see it on the dashboard and account emails say so. The current version always lives at this address." ] } ] }, "agent": { "title": "The agent — sleep a PC, hold it awake, and wake it remotely without extra hardware — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Sleep the machine, hold it awake while you use it, and put it back", "$note": "Rewritten in R10, because R3 shipped what an earlier version of this page said was 'the next thing we are building'. Two of these paragraphs are contracts the rest of the product depends on: the self-wake limit (an agent on a sleeping machine is asleep — home-copy.test.mjs holds the whole catalogue to it) and the reporting list, which must say the same things the privacy policy says. The Echo RETURNED to the lead on 2026-08-11, the day Amazon certified and published the skill — it had been removed while the skill was unpublished, because this page is static and could not gate the claim on /api/flags. If the skill is ever withdrawn, that sentence goes with it. G5 (2026-08-09) pointed the title and the third paragraph at the search this page already answered — 'wake a pc remotely without hardware' — rather than building a second page to duplicate it; the paragraph keeps the physics honest by saying 'every other machine', never the agent's own host.", "lead": [ "**Install it on the machine you want to sleep.** That machine’s row gains **Sleep**, and it suspends in seconds. While something is genuinely running on it — someone connected over a remote desktop or SSH, a file transfer, a download, a Claude Code session — the agent holds the machine up and the row says which; ten minutes after the last activity it lets the machine go back to sleep. Nothing is left for you to remember.", "**Waking it again comes from somewhere else, and needs nothing installed on the machine being woken.** A magic packet reaches a sleeping machine with no software of ours on it at all — that stays true and it is the default. What it does need is something awake on your network to send it, and the same agent is one: install it on a machine that never sleeps — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS, a home server, a Docker host — and that machine becomes an emitter, taking the wake from us and putting the packet on your network. No new hardware, nothing plugged in, nothing to lose behind a cupboard.", "Already have an Echo? Then voice wake needs nothing installed anywhere: link the Rooster Wake skill, say “Alexa, discover devices”, and your Echo itself broadcasts the wake-up signal — included on every plan. The agent is for everything either side of that: sleeping the machine, holding it awake while it is being used, restart and shutdown, wakes from the dashboard, the API and schedules, and networks an Echo cannot reach.", "This is also the answer if you arrived here looking for a way to wake a PC remotely without buying any hardware. The agent on one always-on machine wakes every other machine on the network, from anywhere, with no port forwarding and nothing installed on the machines being woken — and the account it joins is the same product the dongle gets, free plan included.", "It is free to download and free to use as an emitter, because waking a machine is free on whatever hardware you bring. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro make sleeps unmetered and add the rest of the power button — **Keep awake…**, **Restart…** and **Shut down…** for the machine it runs on." ], "doesHeading": "What it does, and what it does not", "does": [ "**It sleeps the machine, and holds it up while the machine is in use.** Press **Sleep** on the row and it suspends in seconds. It will not go while somebody is working on it: a remote desktop or SSH session, a file transfer, a download or a Claude Code run all hold it up, and the row says which. Ten minutes after the last activity the hold lapses and the machine goes back where it was found — asleep on a machine a packet can reach, a clean shutdown where only a power switch could start it again, and left alone where neither is true, because a machine nothing can wake must not be put somewhere nothing can rescue it from.", "**On a paid plan it carries the rest of the power button.** Wake-on-LAN can only ever switch a machine on; sleep, restart and shutdown need software on the machine itself, which is what the agent is. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add **Keep awake…**, **Restart…** and **Shut down…** for the machine the agent runs on, from the dashboard or the API. \"Accepted\" is all a reply can say — the action tears down the process that would report success, so the connection dropping is the confirmation. When you share your account, power is a separate permission from waking, because a shutdown can leave a machine stranded.", "**It sends wakes.** It joins your account like a dongle does, and when you press Wake — from the dashboard, the API or a schedule — it broadcasts the magic packet on every network it can see.", "**It reads whether a wake can land, and puts it right.** On Windows, Linux and a Mac it reports whether the machine's network adapter is set to wake on a magic packet — and on Windows whether Fast Startup is on, which stops a shut-down machine waking. When something is wrong the machine's row on the dashboard shows **wakes may fail**, and the **Wake readiness** section in its settings names the problem in a line and offers **Prepare for wake**. Press it and the agent makes the change and reports each step: on Linux, **Network adapter set to wake the machine.** — and it re-applies that setting at every start and every wake, so it holds through reboots; on a Mac, **Wake for network access switched on.** That one takes effect at once; on Windows the adapter change takes effect after the next restart, and the row's **Restart…** button does that. When all is well the section reads **Ready to wake ✓**. It changes nothing until you press the button, it will not arm a Mac whose wake adapter is Wi-Fi — a Mac wakes on a magic packet over Ethernet only — and no software reaches the BIOS setting that keeps a fully-off PC's card fed; that one stays yours. On Linux the check and the fix need the agent installed as its service, which is what the install paste sets up.", "**It cannot wake the machine it runs on.** An agent on a sleeping machine is asleep along with it — no software survives its own host powering down. The first packet has to come from something that is awake: a dongle, or an agent on another machine. While its host is up, it wakes anything else on the network.", "**It does not confirm a wake yet.** Confirmation watches the network for the machine answering, which needs privileges the agent does not ask for today. A dongle still does that.", "**What it reports.** More than a dongle, because it stands on the machine: the machine's name, operating system and version, its network adapters' addresses — which is how we know which of your machines it runs on — whether the machine can be woken again after a full shutdown, and a count of signed-in sessions. Never who is signed in, and never what anyone is doing; the [privacy policy](/privacy) carries the same list. It makes one outbound connection to us and listens on no port." ], "installHeading": "Installing it", "$installNote": "Retold for the dashboard funnel (2026-08-10, Philip's decision): this page stopped serving downloads — the download table and its /api/agent/releases fetch are gone, and the machine endpoints (the stable MSI URL, the download API) stay live but unadvertised. The install story now leads with sign-in, because the dashboard writes the command with the account's credential in it — 'credential', not 'email', since the personal-token pass (2026-08-10): paid dashboards fill a standing personal enrolment token (ENROLTOKEN), free fills the session's confirmed email, and this page's sentence must stay true for both — one paste per machine, all three platforms — and the double-click email wizard demotes to the hand-me-down-MSI sentence, which keeps the 'admin approval once' honesty. /qn still appears exactly once, beside ENROLTOKEN in the fleet paragraph, and home-copy.test.mjs holds that pairing; the same suite bans any direct-download link to /api/agent/download or /agent/roosterwake-agent.msi from this section. Never curl-pipe-sh anywhere (the pre-flight decision). macOS carries the same pair as Windows now that the signed, notarised package is published — the dashboard offers the package and keeps the bare binary behind it — so the funnel sentence names three shapes and the macOS note names both routes; the stable .pkg URL is banned from this section exactly as the .msi one is, because the dashboard is what hands over a download with a credential beside it. The macOS launchd caveat keeps the compatibility checker's honesty register until first hardware proves it, and is written to cover both routes because both load the same job; the bare exe keeps its portable mention; self-hosters get their own section pointing at the open repository's downloads documentation, where the direct URLs and checksums moved.", "install": [ "**The short way, on every platform:** [sign in](/signin?next={{brand.app}}/emitters) first. Sign-in is a magic link, so clicking it confirms your email — and your dashboard then writes the install command for each machine, your account's credential already filled in. One paste per machine, and on a Mac a download and one line: a single `msiexec` line on Windows, the signed installer package with its one Terminal line on a Mac, a three-line fetch-and-install paste on Linux, with the right build picked for Intel, ARM or Apple silicon. The machine you are installing is rarely the machine you are reading this on — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS — so copy the paste to wherever the always-on box lives, run it there, and the machine appears on your dashboard as it joins.", "Handed the installer itself instead — `roosterwake-agent.msi` from a colleague, a USB stick, a deployment share? It still works on its own: double-click it and it asks for your account email, installs the agent as a service and registers it to you. Windows asks for admin approval once; installing a service needs it." ], "installNotes": [ "On Linux the paste runs `install`, and `install` does the whole job: it registers the agent to your account, sets it up as a systemd service and starts it. If the address needs confirming, the agent prints a link; open it and the machine appears on your dashboard alongside any dongles you own.", "**On a Mac your dashboard offers an installer package rather than a paste.** It is signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens without a warning to click past: double-click it — or run `sudo installer -pkg` on it — and it puts the agent in place along with the background service that starts it with the machine and the helper that lets the Mac say goodbye before it sleeps. One line in Terminal afterwards, which your dashboard writes with your credential in it, joins that Mac to your account. The bare macOS binary is still built and still served for anyone who would rather fetch it by name and run `install` themselves — the same subcommand Linux runs, writing a launchd job in place of a systemd one, and `platform=darwin-arm64` in the downloads documentation below.", "One caveat on macOS, stated rather than discovered: the launchd service — the part that starts the agent with the machine, whichever route sets it up — is newly built and has not yet been proven on real hardware. It should start with the machine; if it does not on yours, tell us — we would rather say so here than have you find out.", "**On a NAS, a server or a Home Assistant box?** The agent also ships as a container image, `{{brand.agentImage}}`, host-networked with a volume at `/data` — one `docker run` line, and it enrols itself as an always-on waker. [The NAS page](/nas) has the line and the Synology, QNAP, Unraid, TrueNAS and Home Assistant add-on steps.", "Prefer not to install anything? The bare Windows executable is still built and still served — `platform=windows-amd64` in the downloads documentation below. It is the portable, no-admin option: it registers no service, so it wakes things only while you leave it running.", "**Rolling out a fleet?** The same installer runs silently: `msiexec /i roosterwake-agent.msi /qn ENROLTOKEN=` installs each machine and binds it to your account with nobody at the desk. Enrolment tokens come with Pro, minted on the dashboard's Deploy at scale card — which writes these commands for you too." ], "selfHostHeading": "Fetching the builds yourself", "selfHost": [ "**Self-hosting the relay, or fetching builds by hand?** The binaries, their checksums and the verification steps are documented in the open repository — [the downloads page]({{brand.repo}}/blob/main/docs/DOWNLOADS.md) lists the stable URL for every platform, and none of them needs an account. The agent speaks the published protocol, and `--relay` at install points it at a relay of your own." ], "windowsWarning": "**Windows will warn you before it runs this.** We do not yet hold a code-signing certificate, so SmartScreen shows “Windows protected your PC” and you have to choose More info, then Run anyway. We would rather tell you that here than have you find it and wonder. Check the SHA-256 first — the downloads documentation above shows how; it is the provenance we can offer today." }, "siri": { "$note": "G8 (2026-08-10): the Siri Shortcuts gallery, rendered by js/siri.js into the legal shell. The whole page is a recipe against the documented REST API, so its honesty has three legs that siri-copy.test.mjs enforces. The endpoint named here is the real one — /api/v1/wake and its /api/v1/wake/{id} poll — pinned to the function files in app/, so a route rename fails the suite before it ships a recipe that 404s. The credential story is the API key, phrased from shared/tiers.js (Plus includes five keys, Pro is unlimited, the free plan has none) — never 'voice is paid', because voice-the-Alexa-feature stays free on every plan and the pricing grid says so. And no .shortcut file or iCloud share link is promised: signed Shortcut files can only be authored on an Apple device, so the page teaches the build instead, and the note saying so is asserted present. Every MAC in the examples is an RFC 7042 documentation address (00:00:5E:00:53:xx).", "path": "/siri-shortcuts", "title": "Siri Shortcuts — wake your PC with \"Hey Siri\" — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "\"Hey Siri, wake the studio\"", "lead": [ "A Shortcut on your iPhone, Apple Watch, HomePod or Mac can wake a machine on your account with a phrase you choose. This page is the recipe: about two minutes in Apple's Shortcuts app, calling the same documented REST API that every script and integration on your account uses.", "Be clear about what this is, because we would rather say it than have you discover it: this is Apple's Shortcuts app running a documented recipe against our API — not an app we ship, and not the Alexa skill. Voice wake with Alexa is included on every plan; a Siri Shortcut authenticates with an API key, and API keys come with the paid plans — Plus includes five, Pro is unlimited, and the free plan has none.", "The key is created on your dashboard's [API keys page]({{brand.app}}/keys) — it is behind sign-in, because it is part of your account. Give the Shortcut a key with only the scopes it needs: a key that leaks from a phone should cost you an unexpected boot, not your account." ], "recipes": [ { "title": "The two-minute build: wake by voice", "intro": [ "Six steps in the Shortcuts app. You need two things first: an API key with the **wake** scope, and the MAC address of a machine already saved on your account — the endpoint takes the adapter's address, not the machine's name." ], "steps": [ "On your [API keys page]({{brand.app}}/keys), create a key with the **wake** scope and copy it — it is shown exactly once.", "Note the target machine's MAC address from your machines page: six pairs like `00:00:5E:00:53:2A`. It must be a machine already saved on your account.", "In Shortcuts, create a new shortcut and add the action **Get Contents of URL**.", "Set the URL to `{{brand.app}}/api/v1/wake`, expand **Show More**, and set the **Method** to **POST**.", "Add a **Header**: key `Authorization`, value `Bearer` followed by a space and your API key. Set **Request Body** to **JSON** and add a text field `mac` with the machine's address — `00:00:5E:00:53:2A` in this example.", "Name the shortcut the phrase you want to say — the name **is** the Siri phrase. Call it \"Wake the studio\", and \"Hey Siri, wake the studio\" works from the phone, the watch, or a HomePod." ], "after": [ "The endpoint answers with JSON. `ok` says whether the packet went out; when it did not, `err` is the machine-readable reason and `diagnosis` is the same plain-English explanation the dashboard shows. A device-level failure still answers HTTP 200 with `ok: false` — read the body, not just the status code. The reply also carries an `id`: the history row this wake wrote, and the handle the longer build below polls to learn whether the machine actually came up." ] }, { "title": "The longer build: wake, then have Siri speak the result", "intro": [ "A magic packet is fire-and-forget; knowing the machine came up is the paid plans' confirmation probe watching your network for it answering. This build asks for the probe, waits, fetches the settled answer, and has Siri say it out loud. It needs a key carrying both the **wake** and **read** scopes — the poll is a read." ], "steps": [ "Add **Get Contents of URL** exactly as in the recipe above — same URL, method and `Authorization` header — but give the JSON body a second field: a **Boolean** named `confirm`, set to true. That is what starts the probe.", "Add **Get Dictionary Value** and read `id` from the response.", "Add **Wait**. The probe watches for up to 90 seconds, which covers a cold boot — waiting the full 90 means the answer you fetch is settled rather than still in flight.", "Add a second **Get Contents of URL**: method **GET**, the same `Authorization` header, and the URL `{{brand.app}}/api/v1/wake/` followed by the `id` from step 2.", "The answer's `entry` dictionary carries `probeState` — `up` when the machine answered — and `diagnosis` when something went wrong. Add **Get Dictionary Value** for it, then an **If** action: when `probeState` is `up`, **Speak Text** the sentence you want to hear; otherwise speak the `diagnosis`." ], "after": [ "You do not have to poll promptly, or at all: an abandoned probe is settled server-side, so the row answers with the settled truth whenever the Shortcut asks, within your plan's history retention." ] } ], "failuresTitle": "The failures you will actually hit", "failures": [ "**401, no_key or bad_key.** The header must be exactly `Authorization: Bearer ` — the word `Bearer`, one space, the key pasted whole. A revoked or expired key gets the same answer as a mistyped one, deliberately.", "**Nowhere to create a key?** The free plan includes no API keys, and the [API keys page]({{brand.app}}/keys) says so plainly rather than failing quietly. Keys come with the paid plans — the [pricing table](/#pricing) is the complete list of what each plan carries.", "**ok: false with bad_mac.** The `mac` field takes the network adapter's address, never the machine's name — and it must be one of the machines saved on your account. Copy it from your machines page: six pairs separated by colons, like `00:00:5E:00:53:2A`.", "**ok: false with offline.** The request worked; no emitter of yours was online to carry the packet. The `diagnosis` says so — the fix is at home, where a dongle or the [agent](/agent) needs to be running, not in the Shortcut.", "**ok: false with rate_limited.** The wake budget refused, and the reply's `retryAfter` says how many whole seconds until it will not. A Shortcut wired into an automation loop is the usual cause." ], "filesNote": "**Why is there no ready-made file to download?** A signed `.shortcut` file — and the iCloud link that shares one — can only be authored on an Apple device, so we teach the two-minute build instead of shipping something we cannot produce cleanly today. If share links are added later, this page is where they will appear; until then, treat any ready-made {{brand.name}} shortcut file from elsewhere as unreviewed.", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Create an API key", "href": "{{brand.app}}/keys" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "status": { "$note": "G8 (2026-08-10): the public status page, rendered by js/status.js from GET /api/status — which asks the relay's own /healthz server-side and maps the answer. Three rules hold every sentence here, and status.test.mjs bans the language outright. No SLA, no guarantee, no uptime percentage: we do not store history, so any such number would be invented. No history graph, for the same reason — the page shows the live answer and nothing else. And each state says plainly what it means for a wake, because a status page that needs interpreting is not one.", "title": "Status — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Service status", "lead": [ "This page asks the relay — the server every dongle and agent holds its outbound connection to — for its own health check, and shows you what it answered. Nothing here is stored, smoothed or averaged: it is the live answer, re-asked every 30 seconds while the page is open." ], "serviceLabel": "Relay", "states": { "checking": { "label": "Checking", "body": "Asking the relay now." }, "up": { "label": "Up", "body": "The relay is answering and its database is reachable. Devices can hold their connections, and wakes are being accepted and delivered." }, "degraded": { "label": "Degraded", "body": "The relay is answering, but it cannot reach its database — so devices cannot authenticate, and wakes will not go through until it recovers." }, "down": { "label": "Down", "body": "The relay did not answer our check within five seconds. Wakes will not go through until it is back." }, "unknown": { "label": "Could not check", "body": "This page could not reach our status check at all — which may say more about the connection between you and us than about the relay itself. Reload to try again." } }, "protocolLabel": "Wire protocol", "protocolValue": "v{{n}}", "checkedJustNow": "Checked just now", "checkedAgo": "Checked {{n}} seconds ago", "honest": "That is the whole page, deliberately. We do not show an uptime percentage or a history graph, because we do not store either — this page asks the relay live and reports what it said, nothing more. If something here looks wrong for more than a few minutes, the [support page]({{brand.app}}/support) reaches us, and [GitHub issues]({{brand.repo}}/issues) are open to everyone." }, "landing": { "$note": "G5 (2026-08-09): the search landing pages. Each entry is one static page under site/public/, named by and rendered by js/landing.js into the legal-page shell; `path` is its URL and must match site/tools/gen-brand.mjs PAGES, which generates the sitemap — home-copy.test.mjs pins the three together. Two rules govern every sentence here. These pages answer a search honestly rather than funnelling blindly: the reader typed a problem, the page solves it, and the product appears where it genuinely is the solution. And no competitor is ever named — the framing stays generic ('software-only services', 'free Alexa skills'), Philip's standing default; named pages only if he asks. The third query this pass targeted — 'wake a pc remotely without hardware' — is deliberately NOT a page here: /agent already answered it, so its title and lead were extended instead of a doorway page being built beside it. Voice is not sold on these pages at all: the skill is in certification, these pages are static, and a claim that needs /api/flags to stay honest does not belong in a file that cannot ask. THE POWER-CYCLING PAGES (2026-08-21) also live in this namespace: /certified-power-switches and /remotely-power-cycle-a-frozen-pc are product documentation for the smart-plug feature rather than G5 search pages, but they render, bind and generate identically (js/landing.js, gen-brand.mjs, the sitemap), and they carry their own `faq` arrays — the machinery has supported that since the persona guides, in landingBlocks and buildLandingGraph alike. Their load-bearing claims (the registry mirror, the LAN-only security sentence, the Part P electrician rule, the alert-only watchdog) are pinned by site/test/power-copy.test.mjs.", "portForwarding": { "path": "/wake-on-lan-without-port-forwarding", "title": "Wake-on-LAN without port forwarding — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Wake-on-LAN without port forwarding", "lead": [ "You can wake a PC across the internet without opening a single port. This page explains why the port-forwarding route every guide reaches for first is the wrong fix, what actually works instead, and how to know the wake landed — which is the part the guides skip." ], "sections": [ { "title": "Why the obvious fix is the wrong one", "body": [ "A magic packet is a UDP broadcast addressed to your whole local network segment. The classic advice is to forward a UDP port on your router to the broadcast address and send the packet from outside. Three things are wrong with that. Most routers refuse to forward to a broadcast address at all — and on the ones that accept it, the setting has a habit of silently dying at the next firmware update. Forwarding to the machine's own IP instead fails the moment the machine sleeps, because a sleeping machine drops out of the router's ARP table and the router no longer knows where to deliver. And the port you opened is open to the whole internet, being probed within minutes, in exchange for a feature you use twice a week.", "Dynamic DNS, static ARP entries and port knocking are all patches on the same underlying mistake: trying to deliver a LAN broadcast from outside the LAN. Routers do not forward broadcasts, and no ISP will carry one to your house. That is a property of the protocol, not a router setting you have not found yet." ] }, { "title": "What works: something inside, dialling out", "body": [ "Every service that says \"no port forwarding\" — and these days that is the whole category, ours included — works the same way. A small emitter sits inside your network and holds an outbound, encrypted connection to a relay. When you press Wake from wherever you are, the relay passes the request down the connection the emitter already opened, and the emitter puts the broadcast on the LAN — the only place a magic packet can exist. Your router treats all of it as ordinary outgoing traffic. Nothing inbound, nothing exposed, nothing to forward.", "So the real question is not whether you can avoid port forwarding — you can, everywhere — but what the thing inside your network is, and what happens after the packet goes out." ] }, { "title": "The thing inside: a half-watt dongle, or software with a home already", "body": [ "{{brand.name}} gives the emitter job two forms. The dongle is a Raspberry Pi Pico W in a printed case: plug it in near the router, give it your Wi-Fi, and it holds its connection on about half a watt — nothing else in the house has to stay on. The free [agent](/agent) is the same emitter as software: install it on a machine that already never sleeps — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS, a home server — and you have the whole product with no hardware purchase at all. Either way, nothing has to be installed on the PC you are waking — an emitter lives on something that stays awake, never on the machine you are switching on." ] }, { "title": "The part the guides skip: did it actually work?", "body": [ "Wake-on-LAN has no acknowledgement. The packet goes out and the protocol tells you nothing — not \"it worked\", not \"wrong MAC\", not \"the machine ignored it\". Sending blind is fine until the morning it quietly is not. On the paid plans, {{brand.name}} probes the machine after every wake and tells you plainly: it came up, or it did not and here is the likely reason — and the dashboard installs as an app on your phone, so the paid plans push that answer to your pocket rather than leaving it in a tab.", "The free plan wakes one machine from anywhere, indefinitely, and keeps its last ten attempts on record with the reason any failed. Start there and find out whether the wake alone is all you need." ] } ], "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "cloudService": { "path": "/wake-on-lan-cloud-service", "title": "What a Wake-on-LAN cloud service actually does — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "What a Wake-on-LAN cloud service actually does", "lead": [ "A cloud service cannot wake your PC. That sentence is doing real work: a magic packet is a local broadcast, routers do not forward broadcasts, and nothing outside your network can deliver one. What a cloud service actually sells is choreography — an emitter inside your network, a relay outside it, and everything around the wake: proof, schedules, history, other people. Here is how to judge one, ours included." ], "sections": [ { "title": "The shape they all share", "body": [ "An emitter inside the LAN — a plugged-in device or an installed program — keeps an outbound, encrypted connection to the service's relay. Your phone talks to the relay, the relay talks down the held-open connection, and the emitter broadcasts the packet locally. No port forwarding, nothing inbound: that part is table stakes across the category now, and a service still asking you to open a port is telling you something about its age.", "{{brand.name}}'s emitter is a half-watt dongle you put together from [about £17 of off-the-shelf parts](/dongle-kit) — the firmware, the case and the bill of materials are open — or the free [agent](/agent) installed on any machine you already leave on. One account can mix both." ] }, { "title": "What separates them: the answer to \"did it work?\"", "body": [ "A magic packet is fire-and-forget, so a service that only sends is a button and a prayer. In the free and paid tiers of the wake-on-LAN services we reviewed, we did not find one that probes the machine afterwards and reports what it finds. That is the heart of ours: on the paid plans every wake is followed by a probe, the result lands on your history with the reason when it failed, and the dashboard — installable as an app — pushes the answer to your phone: confirmed up, or failed and why." ] }, { "title": "The rest of the substance worth checking for", "items": [ "**Schedules that live server-side** — wake at eight every weekday, and on the paid plans equally sleep or shut a machine down at seven through the agent. They retry when one does not land, and they can report a failure to a webhook.", "**People, without a shared password** — invitations with their own sign-ins; on Pro, roles, with power as its own permission.", "**Wake links** — a revocable URL that wakes one machine, for someone with no account at all, and deliberately nothing more.", "**A REST API and webhooks**, for wiring a wake into whatever you already run.", "**A native Home Assistant integration** — machines as devices, wake and power buttons, a machine-is-up sensor — installable today through HACS as a custom repository.", "**An exit.** Our firmware is open and the reference relay is self-hostable, so if we vanished — or you would simply rather run it yourself — the hardware keeps working and the cloud half becomes optional. We did not find another commercial service in this category that can print that paragraph." ] }, { "title": "What it costs", "body": [ "The free plan is a real product rather than a trial: one machine, unlimited wakes, from anywhere, no expiry, and its last ten attempts on record. The paid plans start at £{{price.plus}} a year and carry the substance above — the [pricing table](/#pricing) says exactly which plan carries what." ] } ], "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "exposedRdp": { "$note": "The Connect Facts positioning page (2026-08-11), and the docs target the dashboard's exposed-port warning links to. It tells a TRUE story — we found our own Remote Desktop exposed to the internet under active brute-force on 2026-08-10, via a forgotten router port-forward (see [[remote-wake-personal-tokens]]). Keep it true: NLA held, there was no breach, and we must not imply one. No competitor is named (landing.* rule); a mesh is 'a mesh network', never Tailscale by name. The security-probe claim must match relay/EXPOSURE-PROBE-THREAT-MODEL.md exactly — we check only the machine's OWN address, never scan anything — because overclaiming here is the one thing that would make the trust pitch a lie.", "path": "/exposed-remote-desktop", "title": "Is your Remote Desktop exposed to the internet? — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "The safe way to reach your machines", "lead": [ "An open Remote Desktop port is the single most brute-forced thing on the internet, and the most common way ransomware gets its first foothold. The trouble is that almost nobody who has one open knows it — a port-forward set up years ago for one evening, a router default, a setting that survived a firmware update. It sits there answering strangers, and the first sign of trouble is usually the trouble itself." ], "sections": [ { "title": "This happened to us", "body": [ "While building {{brand.name}}'s remote-connection features we went looking at our own setup, and found a Remote Desktop port on one of our machines open to the whole internet — forwarded by a router rule nobody remembered making, and already being hammered by the automated login attempts that sweep every address on the internet looking for exactly this. The account defences held and nothing got in, but the exposure was real and it had been there quietly for a long time. If it can happen to the people writing the security page, it can happen to anyone.", "The uncomfortable part was how invisible it was. Nothing on the machine looked wrong. The only way to know was to check the machine's door from the outside — which is precisely the check we built in." ] }, { "title": "Why an open Remote Desktop port is the risk it is", "body": [ "Remote Desktop was built to be reached across a trusted network, not across the open internet. Exposed directly, it is a login prompt facing four billion addresses, and automated tools try millions of username-and-password combinations against those prompts continuously. One reused or guessable password, one unpatched flaw in the protocol itself, and a stranger has an interactive session on your machine — which is why this exact exposure is the entry point behind a large share of ransomware cases.", "\"No port forwarding\" is the answer, and it is why nothing about {{brand.name}} asks you to open a port. But knowing the theory does not help if a forward you forgot is open right now. That is the gap this feature closes." ] }, { "title": "What {{brand.name}} does about it", "body": [ "Install the free [agent](/agent) on a machine and it reports that machine's own connection posture back to your dashboard — including whether its Remote Desktop port is answering from the public internet. When it is, your machine's card says so plainly, names the port, and tells you how to close it. This runs on every plan, free included: knowing your own front door is unlocked is not a feature we would put behind a price.", "One promise about how that check works, because it is the whole basis of trusting us with it: we only ever look at the machine's own address — the one its own agent is reporting from — and never anything else. The system is built so that it is structurally incapable of scanning any other address; it is a mirror held up to your own machine, not a scanner pointed at the network." ] }, { "title": "The safe pattern: keep it asleep, wake it, connect with your own tools", "body": [ "The reason so many machines end up with an open port is that people leave a PC on and reachable so they can get to it later. {{brand.name}} removes that reason. Keep the machine asleep — drawing a couple of watts, exposing nothing — and wake it the moment you need it, from anywhere, with nothing forwarded and no software required on the machine you are waking. The agent that runs the exposure check above is optional: waking never needs it, and what it adds is that posture report on every plan, and sleep, restart and shutdown on the paid plans.", "Once it is awake, reach it the safe way: over a mesh network that needs no open ports, or a zero-setup remote tool that connects out to you rather than waiting for the internet to connect in. The dashboard hands you that connection at the moment the machine is up. Nothing about the path leaves a door open when you are done — the machine goes back to sleep, and there is no port for anyone to find." ] } ], "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "powerSwitches": { "$note": "The certified power switches page (P6 of the smart-plug power-cycling build, 2026-08-21). THE MODEL LIST MIRRORS shared/plug-registry.js — that file is the source of truth: one list item per registry row, in registry order, and site/test/power-copy.test.mjs pins each item's label, form factor, rating, channel count, metering and verified flag to it, so flipping `verified` after a bench pass fails the suite until this page is retold in the same commit. Every model is UNVERIFIED until the P7 bench session has driven the full ladder on the physical device — the page says so plainly rather than borrowing the vendor's word, and 'Bench-verified' may only be written on an item whose registry flag is true. Two safety sentences are load-bearing and pinned: the inline-module paragraphs say electrician and Part P, and NOTHING on this page may instruct DIY mains work; the security paragraph says the switch needs no cloud account, no vendor app and no internet access. Copy-consistency rule from the plan: 'our servers never touch your network' is the WAKE story's sentence and must not appear here — these pages say the switch is cloud-free and LAN-only instead. Hard power cycling is paid (the power ladder, canPowerMachine in shared/entitlement.js), so every capability sentence names the paid plans; waking stays free and both power pages say that out loud. We do not sell the hardware (the no-dropshipping decision): the Amazon link is the reference unit, we take no commission, and if that ever changes this note and the page must say so.", "path": "/certified-power-switches", "title": "Certified power switches for remote power cycling — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Certified power switches: hard power control for machines that don't have it", "lead": [ "A power switch — a smart plug or an inline relay module — cuts and restores mains power to a machine on command. It is the recovery rung below everything else this product does: when a machine is so far gone that no magic packet and no software can reach it, cutting the power and putting it back is the one move that always remains. Servers get that rung built in as IPMI or iDRAC; this is the same ability for the machines that never had it.", "This page is the list of models we certify, what each form factor is for, and what to know before you buy one. We deliberately sell none of this hardware — you buy a standard, safety-approved device from a retailer, and {{brand.name}} drives it." ], "sections": [ { "title": "Where it sits: the last rung, never the first choice", "body": [ "Hard power cycling is the backstop, not the routine. The ladder runs: wake by magic packet; ask the machine's own agent for a graceful shutdown or restart; and only when the machine can hear neither — a hung kernel, a crash, a box a power cut left dark — cut and restore the mains through the switch. On the paid plans, which carry the power actions, that order is enforced: a power cycle tries the graceful route first wherever the machine has an agent, and the hard cut is never one click.", "Cutting power to a running machine is a dirty cut: whatever was unsaved is lost, exactly as if you had pulled the plug by hand — because that is what it is. That is the point — it is what you would do standing next to the machine, when the alternative is driving there — and the [setup guide](/remotely-power-cycle-a-frozen-pc) covers the one BIOS setting that decides whether the machine comes back afterwards." ] }, { "title": "The certified models", "$note": "This list mirrors shared/plug-registry.js and site/test/power-copy.test.mjs enforces the mirror. Edit the registry first; retell this list in the same commit.", "body": [ "Certified means we drive it ourselves: these models are the driver's entire allowlist, and a switch that is not on this list is refused rather than guessed at — answering on the network is not a qualification for switching somebody's mains. Verified is a stronger word and we use it precisely: it means the full ladder has been run against the physical device on our bench — power cut, power restored, a real machine watched all the way back up. Each item below says so only when it is true: the reference unit has been through that bench pass, and the rest carry a plain \"not yet\" until their own turn on the bench." ], "items": [ "**Shelly Plus Plug UK** — plug-in adapter, 13 A, one channel, power metering. The reference unit our drivers are built against. Bench-verified: discovered, claimed and switched on real hardware, with its metering feeding the readings we show.", "**Shelly Plug S Gen3** — plug-in adapter, 12 A, one channel, power metering. Not yet bench-verified.", "**Shelly 1PM Mini Gen4** — inline relay module, 8 A, one channel, power metering. Not yet bench-verified.", "**Shelly Plus 1PM** — inline relay module, 16 A, one channel, power metering. Not yet bench-verified.", "**Shelly Plug S (Gen1)** — plug-in adapter, 10 A, one channel, power metering. Not yet bench-verified.", "**Shelly 1PM (Gen1)** — inline relay module, 16 A, one channel, power metering. Not yet bench-verified." ] }, { "title": "Plug-in adapters: for the machine at a wall socket", "body": [ "A plug-in adapter sits between the machine's plug and the socket — no tools, no wiring, entirely self-serve. It is the right form factor for a desktop, a NAS, or anything else that plugs into a socket you can reach.", "One UK-specific note before you buy: on a standard UK double socket, an adapter's body is wider than the plug it replaces and can overhang the second outlet. If both outlets are in use, check the adapter's width against the gap first — or give the adapter the outlet with free space beside it.", "The current ratings above are the relay's rating, not a promise about the load: a desktop and its monitor sit far inside any of them, but do not put a heater, a kettle, or an extension strip of unknown appliances behind one." ] }, { "title": "Inline relay modules: for fixed installations — fitted by an electrician", "body": [ "An inline relay module wires into the circuit itself — behind a socket, in a machine's supply, on a DIN rail in a cabinet. It is the tidy answer for signage, kiosks and racked machines, where a plug-in adapter would dangle or get unplugged by a well-meaning cleaner, and the higher-rated modules switch loads a plug-in adapter never should.", "In the UK, fitting one means working on fixed mains wiring. That is a job for a qualified electrician — in England and Wales it falls under Part P of the Building Regulations — and nothing on this site will ever instruct you to do it yourself. Buy the module, hand it to the electrician, and say which machine's supply it is for; the {{brand.name}} half of the setup only begins once the module is safely on the wire and on your network." ] }, { "title": "No cloud account, no vendor app, no internet", "body": [ "The switch needs no cloud account, no vendor app, and no internet access at all: firewall it off from the internet and it still works, because the only path to it is a {{brand.name}} device on your own network, speaking to it over local HTTP. During setup you decline the vendor's cloud rather than joining it. That is a sentence no cloud-tethered plug can say, and it means the vendor's outages, logins and firmware pushes are simply not in your recovery path.", "What that design asks of you: a {{brand.name}} device on the same network as the switch. The dongle is the guaranteed answer — being always on is its entire design — and the free [agent](/agent) on another machine works too, for as long as that machine is awake. An agent on the machine you want to cycle cannot do this job, by definition: when that machine hangs, everything running on it hangs with it." ] }, { "title": "We sell none of this hardware, on purpose", "body": [ "There is no {{brand.name}}-branded plug and no marked-up bundle. You buy a standard, mass-market, safety-certified device from a retailer — the reference unit is the [Shelly Plus Plug UK on Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BV37M88W) — and the subscription drives it. We would rather certify good hardware than resell it: the safety approvals and the warranty stay the vendor's, and you never pay us a margin on a relay in a plastic box.", "Hard power cycling sits with the other power actions — sleep, restart, shut down — on the paid plans; waking stays free on every plan. The [plans](/#pricing) say which plan carries what, and the [setup guide](/remotely-power-cycle-a-frozen-pc) walks the whole arrangement through before you spend anything." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Will any smart plug work?", "a": "No, and that is a safety decision rather than a missing feature. The driver speaks only to the certified list above and refuses anything else, because a device we have never driven should not be pointed at somebody's mains on the strength of it answering the network. The list grows when a model earns its place on our bench — if yours is not on it, tell us which one and what you would use it for." }, { "q": "Do I need a {{brand.name}} device for the switch to work?", "a": "Yes — one on the same network as the switch: a dongle, or the free [agent](/agent) on another machine that stays awake. That requirement is the security design, not a limitation of it: the switch is driven over local HTTP by your own device, which is exactly what lets it work with no cloud account, no vendor app and no internet access at all." }, { "q": "Is cutting the power bad for my PC?", "a": "It is a dirty cut, and we would rather say so than soften it: unsaved work is lost, exactly as if you had pulled the plug by hand. Modern filesystems and hardware tolerate it far better than the folklore says, but it is a recovery action, not a convenience — which is why the ladder tries a graceful shutdown through the agent first wherever one is reachable, and why the hard cut is never one click." }, { "q": "What does \"not yet bench-verified\" mean?", "a": "That the drivers are written against the model's documented behaviour, and our own bench has not yet cut power on the physical device and watched a machine come all the way back. The list is published ahead of those bench sessions so you can see which models we support, and a model is marked verified only from its own bench result — the same standard the dashboard applies to your own machine's recovery." }, { "q": "Can I fit an inline module myself?", "a": "Not on our advice. In the UK, inline modules go into fixed mains wiring — electrician territory, and in England and Wales Part P of the Building Regulations applies — so this site never carries wiring instructions for them. If you want the self-serve option, that is exactly what the plug-in adapters are for: they need nothing but a free socket." }, { "q": "Which plans include power cycling?", "a": "The paid plans — hard power cycling sits with sleep, restart and shutdown as part of the power ladder, while waking stays free on every plan. A switch on the free plan does nothing yet, and we would rather you know that before buying one; the [pricing table](/#pricing) is the complete list of what each plan carries." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions before you buy", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Read the setup guide", "href": "/remotely-power-cycle-a-frozen-pc" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "powerCycling": { "$note": "The power-cycling setup guide (P6, 2026-08-21) — the GEO page for the 'remotely power cycle a frozen PC' intent, and the real onboarding document for the feature, in the persona-guide manner: answer first, funnel second. Load-bearing claims, all pinned by site/test/power-copy.test.mjs: the BIOS section names Restore on AC Power Loss and its vendor variants, says the default is off, distinguishes Last State from Power On and states the power-blip side effect of On; the DHCP reservation is a recommendation and never a requirement (identity is the MAC — cloud code re-resolves); the switch needs a {{brand.name}} device on the same LAN (dongle guaranteed, agent on ANOTHER machine opportunistic — an agent on the target is useless by definition); the security sentence (no cloud account, no vendor app, no internet access, firewall it off and it still works); the ladder (graceful shutdown first, hard cut as backstop, dirty-cut honesty, never one click); verify-recovery (consented, explicitly scheduled, never automatic, and 'hard recovery verified' only ever from the stored result); and the watchdog (alert-only — auto-cycle is ABSENT from the product, not a hidden setting, and no copy may soften that into 'off by default'). Every power capability names the paid plans; waking stays free and the page says so.", "path": "/remotely-power-cycle-a-frozen-pc", "title": "Remotely power cycle a frozen PC — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Remotely power cycle a frozen PC: the recovery rung below everything else", "lead": [ "A machine that has truly frozen — hung kernel, crashed driver, a box a power cut left dark — cannot be woken by any packet and cannot be reached by any software, because nothing on it is running to listen. The fix is the one you would perform standing next to it: cut the power, put it back, let it boot. A [certified power switch](/certified-power-switches) — a smart plug or an inline relay module — lets you do exactly that from wherever you are, through your {{brand.name}} device on the same network.", "This guide is the setup, in the order that matters: the BIOS setting that decides whether the machine comes back at all, the network arrangements that keep the switch findable, what the ladder does before it ever cuts power, how to prove the recovery path once on purpose rather than during a real failure, and what the watchdog will — and deliberately will not — do." ], "sections": [ { "title": "First, the BIOS setting: Restore on AC Power Loss", "body": [ "When mains power returns, the motherboard decides what to do — and out of the box, nearly every board decides to stay off. The setting that changes this is called **Restore on AC Power Loss** on many boards, or *AC Power Recovery*, *After Power Loss*, *AC BACK*, *Power On After Power Failure*, depending on the vendor — and it usually ships set to *Power Off*. Find it in the BIOS or UEFI power section and set it before you rely on a power switch for anything.", "It has two useful values, and the difference matters. **Last State** returns the machine to whatever it was doing when power was lost: a machine that was on comes back on, a machine that was off stays off. That is enough for rescuing a hung machine, which was by definition on when you cut it. **Power On** boots the machine whenever mains appears, whatever it was doing before — which is what you want if the switch should also start the machine cold, from off at the wall.", "One side effect to weigh before choosing *Power On*: any blip in the mains — a breaker reset, a brief outage overnight — boots the machine, wanted or not. If that would annoy you, choose *Last State* and accept that cold starts stay a job for the wake path rather than the switch." ] }, { "title": "The ladder: what happens before power is cut", "body": [ "A hard cut is never the first move and never one click. Ask for a power cycle on a machine that has the free [agent](/agent) installed and reachable, and the sequence — enforced on our side, not left to habit — is: ask the agent for a graceful shutdown first; wait for the machine to go down, up to a timeout; only then cut the mains, hold it off for a few seconds, and restore it. A machine that was merely misbehaving gets a clean shutdown; the hard cut is reserved for the machine that cannot answer at all.", "And when it truly cannot answer, be clear about what the cut is: a dirty cut. Whatever was unsaved is lost, exactly as if you had pulled the plug by hand — because that is what it is. Modern filesystems take it in their stride and hardware tolerates it far better than the folklore says, but it is a recovery action, not a convenience, and the confirmation step says so to whoever presses the button, every time, on purpose." ] }, { "title": "Give the switch a fixed spot on the network", "body": [ "The switch is identified by its hardware (MAC) address rather than its IP address, and the drivers re-find it when your router hands out a new lease. Even so: give it a DHCP reservation in your router, the same fixed-address treatment a printer gets. It costs a minute in the router's admin page and removes a whole class of slow moments at exactly the wrong time — and it is a recommendation rather than a requirement: nothing breaks without it, recovery is simply faster with it." ] }, { "title": "You need a {{brand.name}} device on the same network", "body": [ "The switch is not driven from our servers and not driven from your phone: it is driven over local HTTP by a {{brand.name}} device on the same network as the switch. The dongle is the guaranteed way — always on is its entire design, so the path to the switch survives everything short of the whole site losing power. The free [agent](/agent) on another machine works too, with the caveat that it only helps while that machine is awake. An agent on the machine you want to cycle is no use here, by definition: when the machine hangs, everything running on it hangs with it — the same physics as the sleeping host it cannot wake.", "That local arrangement is the security story, so it deserves saying plainly: the switch needs no cloud account, no vendor app, and no internet access at all. Firewall it off from the internet and everything still works, because the only path to it is your {{brand.name}} device on your network. You leave the vendor's cloud switched off during setup; there is no vendor login to phish and no vendor outage in your recovery path." ] }, { "title": "Prove the recovery once, on purpose", "body": [ "The BIOS setting above has an unkind failure mode: you believe it is set, and you find out otherwise during a real emergency. So the dashboard offers a recovery verification: at a moment you choose — explicitly, behind a consent step that says exactly what is about to happen — it cycles the machine's power once and records whether the machine came back. Only that recorded result lets a machine's page say \"hard recovery verified\": the claim comes from a stored fact about your actual machine, never from an assumption about your BIOS.", "It never runs by itself. It does not run during setup, it is not a background check, and nothing ever cycles your machine to keep a status light green. Pick a quiet moment — not while somebody is mid-keystroke on the machine — run it once, and the verified state stands until the hardware changes." ] }, { "title": "The watchdog is alert-only: it tells you, it never acts", "body": [ "Every certified model meters power, and that number is a diagnosis: a machine drawing its normal idle wattage whose agent has gone silent looks hung, while a linked machine drawing zero watts is off at the wall — two different problems, and the dashboard uses two different sentences for them. On the paid plans a watchdog can watch for the hung pattern and send one alert — email, or a push if the dashboard is installed as an app — rather than nagging.", "What it will never do is act on its own. The watchdog is alert-only: it never cuts power on its own, and there is deliberately no setting to change that — automatic recovery is absent from the product, not hidden behind a toggle, because a machine that reboots itself on a heuristic is a machine that reboots itself during exactly the wrong write. You get the alert; you decide; the ladder runs when you say so." ] }, { "title": "What to buy, and what it costs to run", "body": [ "The hardware is a [certified power switch](/certified-power-switches): a plug-in adapter for a machine at a wall socket, or an inline relay module for a fixed installation. The certified list says what each model is for and what it is rated to switch. The short version: the plug-in adapters are entirely self-serve, and an inline module is an electrician's job — in the UK that is Part P territory, and neither this guide nor any other page here will instruct you to wire mains yourself.", "Hard power cycling sits with sleep, restart and shutdown on the paid plans — the power ladder — while waking stays free on every plan. Starting from nothing, the order is: a plan, a {{brand.name}} device — dongle, or the free [agent](/agent) on an always-on box — and then the switch." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Will cutting the power damage the machine or lose my work?", "a": "Unsaved work on a hung machine is lost, exactly as if you had pulled the plug by hand — we would rather say that plainly than let you find out. The hardware itself tolerates a power cut far better than the folklore says, and the ladder protects you where protection is possible: on the paid plans a power cycle asks the machine's agent for a graceful shutdown first, and the hard cut only lands when the machine cannot answer at all." }, { "q": "Why didn't my machine come back when the power was restored?", "a": "Almost always: the BIOS. Nearly every board ships set to stay off after a power loss, and the setting that changes it — Restore on AC Power Loss, AC Power Recovery, After Power Loss, AC BACK, Power On After Power Failure, the name varies by vendor — is still at its default. Set it to Last State or Power On, and then run the recovery verification so the answer is a recorded fact rather than a hope." }, { "q": "Do I need the switch vendor's app or cloud account?", "a": "No — and you should decline both during setup. The switch is driven over local HTTP by your {{brand.name}} device on the same network: no cloud account, no vendor app, no internet access needed at all. Firewall the switch off from the internet and everything still works, which is precisely the arrangement we want you to run." }, { "q": "Can it power cycle the machine automatically when it sees a hang?", "a": "No, deliberately. The watchdog is alert-only: it can tell you a machine looks hung — normal idle wattage, silent agent — but it never cuts power on its own, and there is no setting that makes it. Automatic recovery is absent from the product rather than switched off, because a heuristic that reboots your machine will eventually do it during exactly the write you cared about. You get the alert; the decision stays yours." }, { "q": "Can the agent on the frozen machine do the cycling?", "a": "No, by definition: when a machine hangs, everything running on it hangs with it, the agent included. The device that drives the switch has to be something else on the same network — the dongle, which is always on by design, or the free agent on another machine that happens to be awake. It is the same physics as waking: the first move always comes from something that is still alive." }, { "q": "Is this on the free plan?", "a": "No — hard power cycling sits with sleep, restart and shutdown on the paid plans, as part of the power ladder, while waking stays free on every plan. We say it here because the switch is hardware you buy elsewhere: a power switch on a free account does nothing yet, and you should know that before spending money on one. The [pricing table](/#pricing) is the complete list." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions from people about to press the button", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "Certified power switches", "href": "/certified-power-switches" }, { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "nas": { "$note": "The NAS page (2026-09-03, the waker-role plan's phase 2): the agent's container image as the account's always-on waker, on the always-on computer people already own — a NAS, a Home Assistant box, a home server. A landing page like /dongle-kit: search-found ('wake on lan synology docker', 'home assistant wake on lan add-on') and the install document the dashboard's always-on card and the homelab guide hand people to. RULES. The docker line, the Compose block and the image name are the CONTAINER CONTRACT fixed in the plan and shared with the agent repo's Dockerfile, its README and the Home Assistant add-on — site/test/nas-copy.test.mjs pins them, and the refusal sentence in the host-network item is quoted VERBATIM from the agent's internal/container package; change it there or in none of these places. The image name is NEVER spelled out here: it is {{brand.agentImage}}, projected from shared/brand.js into brand.json (gen-brand.mjs PUBLIC_KEYS), so the docker line, the Compose block, the walk-throughs and the dashboard's install card all name one image — the test refuses a literal. Body entries of the shape { code } are pasteable command blocks, textContent both sides of hydration. The NAS UI labels (Container Manager, Container Station, Unraid's Add Container form, TrueNAS SCALE's Custom App) were written from the current UIs as known on 2026-09-03 — re-check against a real device before re-wording, and prefer the Compose route where a UI takes one, because a pasted file cannot mis-tick a box. The add-on is FREE on every plan (it is the waker); the Home Assistant INTEGRATION in the same repository needs an API key on Plus or Pro, and home-copy.test.mjs's HACS rule means any sentence naming the integration must carry its install path. No router walk-through, ever: routers run nothing (the plan's standing decision).", "path": "/nas", "title": "Your NAS is the always-on machine you already own — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Your NAS is the always-on machine you already own", "lead": [ "Waking a machine over the internet needs exactly one thing inside your network that is awake: something that can put the magic packet on the wire. Your NAS is that thing. Run the {{brand.name}} agent on it as a container and it becomes your account's always-on waker — free on every plan, nothing to buy, nothing plugged in. The machine you want to wake sleeps; the NAS stays up and sends the wake.", "One docker line does it, and the container enrols itself. Below: the line, the Compose block, the three settings that are not optional, and step-by-step walk-throughs for Synology Container Manager, QNAP Container Station, Unraid, TrueNAS SCALE and the Home Assistant add-on." ], "sections": [ { "title": "One line, on any Docker host", "body": [ "The image is `{{brand.agentImage}}`, built for amd64, arm64 and 32-bit ARM. On any machine with Docker — a NAS, a home server, a Pi, a mini PC — this is the whole install:", { "code": "docker run -d --name roosterwake-agent --network host --restart unless-stopped -v roosterwake-agent:/data -e RW_EMAIL=you@example.com {{brand.agentImage}}" }, "Put your own account address in `RW_EMAIL`. If that address has an account, the container asks to join it and you approve it on the Emitters page; if it has none yet, an invitation goes to it. The signed-in [Emitters page]({{brand.app}}/emitters) writes this line for you with your credential already filled in — on the paid plans that is a private enrolment token (`RW_TOKEN=`) rather than your address, which joins your account with no approval step.", "The same thing as a Compose file, for the NAS apps that take one:", { "code": "services:\n roosterwake-agent:\n image: {{brand.agentImage}}\n container_name: roosterwake-agent\n network_mode: host\n restart: unless-stopped\n volumes:\n - roosterwake-agent:/data\n environment:\n RW_EMAIL: you@example.com\nvolumes:\n roosterwake-agent:" }, "It appears on your Emitters page as an **Always on** waker within a minute. The container enrols emitter-only: it sends wakes and reports that it is up, and it never offers to sleep or shut down the NAS it runs on — a waker, not a machine to look after." ] }, { "title": "The three settings that are not optional", "items": [ "**Host network.** A wake is a broadcast, and a broadcast cannot leave a bridge network: a container on Docker's default bridge broadcasts into a network with nothing on it but other containers, every packet is sent and nothing wakes. So the container refuses to start on a bridge, before it writes anything, and says: \"This container is on a bridge network. A wake is a broadcast and cannot leave a bridge, so the agent refuses to start — run it with --network host (Docker) or network_mode: host (Compose), or tick 'Use the same network as the Docker host' in your NAS's container settings.\"", "**A volume at /data.** The container's identity — a device id and a token — lives there. With the volume, a recreate, an image update or a reboot runs the same emitter your dashboard already knows; without it, every recreate is a new emitter and an old row to tidy. A named volume as in the line above, or a folder on the NAS mounted at `/data` — both work, and the image runs as root precisely so a folder created by the NAS's own UI is writable.", "**The email or the token.** Exactly one, and only the first time: once an identity exists on the volume, `RW_EMAIL` and `RW_TOKEN` are ignored, so a recreate never mints a second emitter. To start over, remove the emitter on the Emitters page and empty the volume." ] }, { "title": "Synology: Container Manager", "body": [ "Container Manager (DSM 7.2 and later; *Docker* on older DSM) takes a Compose file as a *Project*, which is the easiest route — paste the block above and it pulls and starts." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "Open **Container Manager** and go to **Project** → **Create**.", "Project name `roosterwake-agent`; for the path, pick or create a folder on a volume (`docker/roosterwake-agent` is the convention).", "Source: **Create docker-compose.yml**. Paste the Compose block above and put your address — or your token line from the Emitters page — in its environment section.", "**Next** through the web-portal step (it needs none) and **Done**. The project pulls the image and starts it; the container shows as running under **Container**.", "Within a minute it is on your Emitters page as an Always on waker." ], "also": { "label": "Prefer the Container wizard to a Compose file?", "items": [ "**Image** → **Add** → **Add from URL**, paste `{{brand.agentImage}}`, and pull the `latest` tag.", "**Container** → **Create**, pick the image, name it `roosterwake-agent`, tick **Enable auto-restart**, then **Next** into the advanced settings.", "Under **Network**, tick **Use the same network as Docker Host** — this is the setting the container refuses to start without.", "Under **Volume settings**, add a folder and mount it at `/data`; under **Environment**, add `RW_EMAIL` with your address. **Next**, then **Done**." ] } }, { "title": "QNAP: Container Station", "body": [ "Container Station 3 has two routes: an *Application* is a Compose file, a *Container* is the wizard. Either way, the network mode is the thing to get right." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "Open **Container Station** → **Applications** → **Create**.", "Name it `roosterwake-agent`, paste the Compose block above into the YAML box with your address in it, and **Create**. It pulls the image and starts.", "Or the wizard: **Containers** → **Create**, type `{{brand.agentImage}}:latest` as the image, name it, and open **Advanced Settings**.", "Under **Network**, set the network mode to **Host**. Under **Storage**, add a volume mounted at `/data` (a folder on a share is fine). Under **Environment**, add `RW_EMAIL` with your address. **Create**.", "Within a minute it is on your Emitters page as an Always on waker." ] }, { "title": "Unraid", "body": [ "Unraid's Docker tab takes an image from any registry with no template needed; the Network Type field is the one that matters." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**Docker** tab → **Add Container**.", "Name `roosterwake-agent`; Repository `{{brand.agentImage}}:latest`.", "**Network Type**: **Host**.", "**Add another Path, Port, Variable, Label or Device** → **Path**: container path `/data`, host path `/mnt/user/appdata/roosterwake-agent/`.", "The same link again → **Variable**: key `RW_EMAIL`, value your address. **Apply** — it pulls and starts, and autostart is on by default.", "Within a minute it is on your Emitters page as an Always on waker." ] }, { "title": "TrueNAS SCALE", "body": [ "On TrueNAS SCALE 24.10 and later, apps are Docker containers and a Compose file installs directly; older SCALE releases have the same three settings in their *Launch Docker Image* form." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**Apps** → **Discover Apps** → the **⋮** menu → **Install via YAML**. Paste the Compose block above with your address in it, and **Save**.", "Or the form: **Discover Apps** → **Custom App**. Image repository `{{brand.agentImage}}`, tag `latest`.", "Under **Network**, tick **Host Network**. Under **Storage**, add a host path (or an ixVolume) mounted at `/data`. Under **Environment Variables**, add `RW_EMAIL` with your address. **Install**.", "Within a minute it is on your Emitters page as an Always on waker." ] }, { "title": "Home Assistant: the add-on", "body": [ "A Home Assistant box is an always-on computer too, and the same image runs there as an **add-on** — the supervisor gives it the host network and a persistent `/data`, so there is nothing to configure but the credential. The add-on repository is [github.com/phodgers/roosterwake-homeassistant](https://github.com/phodgers/roosterwake-homeassistant).", "The add-on is free on every plan: it is the waker, the same free agent as everywhere else. It is not the Home Assistant integration that lives in the same repository — the integration puts your machines on a Home Assistant dashboard as wake buttons and sensors, is installed through HACS as a custom repository, and signs in with an API key, which needs Plus or Pro. You can run both: the add-on wakes, the integration shows. The [homelab guide](/wake-on-lan-homelab-nas) covers the integration side." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**Settings** → **Add-ons** → **Add-on store** → the **⋮** menu (top right) → **Repositories**.", "Paste `https://github.com/phodgers/roosterwake-homeassistant`, press **Add**, and close the dialog. **{{brand.name}} agent** appears in the store — reload the page if it does not.", "Open it and **Install**. On the **Configuration** tab put your account address in *email* — or a token from the Emitters page in *token* — and **Save**.", "On the **Info** tab turn on **Start on boot** and press **Start**. The **Log** tab shows it enrol; within a minute it is on your Emitters page as an Always on waker." ] }, { "title": "Why not the router?", "body": [ "Because it runs nothing. The mesh routers most homes have now — the one from your ISP, the three-pack from the shop — do not run third-party software at all, and the few that do are enthusiast territory. The NAS or the Home Assistant box is the always-on computer people already have: it is on the same network as the machine you want to wake, it stays up, and it takes a container. That is the whole reason this page exists.", "If you have none of these — no NAS, no Home Assistant, no Pi in a cupboard — the [dongle](/dongle-kit) is three parts and about half a watt, and the [homelab guide](/wake-on-lan-homelab-nas) has the arithmetic on which to choose." ] } ], "faqTitle": "Questions from people with a NAS", "faq": [ { "q": "Does the container have to be on the same network as the machine it wakes?", "a": "Yes — the same broadcast domain. A magic packet is a broadcast: it reaches every machine on the segment the NAS is on and none beyond it, which is also why the container needs the host's network rather than Docker's bridge. A NAS on a separate VLAN from the machine cannot wake it; put the container on the VLAN the machine is on, or run a second emitter there. The Emitters page shows exactly which broadcast addresses each emitter sends to, so a wrong-segment wake is visible rather than a mystery." }, { "q": "Can the NAS wake itself?", "a": "No. An agent on a sleeping machine is asleep with it — that is the whole reason the waker has to be the box that stays on. The container makes the NAS the thing that wakes everything else, and the NAS stays up, which is what a NAS does anyway. If you spin the NAS down on a schedule, something else on the network has to carry the wake for it: a second agent on another always-on box, or a dongle." }, { "q": "What does emitter-only mean, and should I switch it off?", "a": "Emitter-only is the default and it is what a NAS wants: the container advertises wake and status and nothing else, so nothing can ever ask it to sleep, restart or shut down the NAS, and the dashboard never files the NAS as a machine to look after — it is a waker. Switch it off (`RW_EMITTER_ONLY=0`) only if you want to power the NAS down from the dashboard, which the Plus and Pro plans can do through a full agent — but a NAS that sleeps is a waker that is asleep, which defeats the point of putting it there." }, { "q": "Does it cost anything?", "a": "No. The agent is free to download and free to use as an emitter on every plan, including the free one, and the container is the same agent — being your always-on waker is exactly the job the free plan includes. What the paid plans add sits around the wake rather than in it: confirmation that the machine actually came up, schedules, sleeping and shutting machines down through an agent on them, API keys, and more machines. The [plans](/#pricing) list all of it." }, { "q": "It refuses to start and talks about a bridge network — what now?", "a": "The container is on Docker's default bridge, where a broadcast can go nowhere useful, so it stops before enrolling rather than sending wakes into a void. Give it the host's network: `--network host` on the docker line, `network_mode: host` in Compose, or the host-network setting in your NAS's container form — each walk-through above names it — then start it again. Nothing was written, so there is nothing to clean up. If you are on a macvlan or an overlay that you know forwards broadcasts, `RW_SKIP_HOSTNET_CHECK=1` skips the check." }, { "q": "Will updating the image or recreating the container make a second emitter?", "a": "Not while the volume at /data survives. The identity — a device id and a token — lives there, and the container reads it before it looks at RW_EMAIL or RW_TOKEN, so a recreate, a pull of a newer image or a reboot runs the same emitter your dashboard already knows. Delete the volume and you have a new emitter and an old row: remove the old one on the Emitters page to free its slot." } ], "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Get the line with your credential in it", "href": "/signin?next={{brand.app}}/emitters" }, { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "dongleKit": { "$note": "The self-sourcing page (2026-08-31, the day the branded-kit plan was retired for good). Philip's decision: we sell no hardware — the dongle is three commodity parts from established vendors, this page IS the kit, and the funnel lands on the web flasher at {{brand.setup}}. RULES. Every price on this page is the VENDOR'S price, read off their live product page on the date the copy states — never invent, round or 'refresh from memory' one; re-check the vendor page and move the date in the same edit. Each section's collapsed 'Other shops' list carries NO prices at all, deliberately: 'stocked at' is the only claim an alternate makes, so those rows cannot drift. Every link on the page, alternates included, was fetched and read before listing (2026-08-31 for the current set) — candidates that failed that check are dropped, not hedged: Pimoroni's snap-on enclosure was out of stock and Vilros's Pico 2 W showed variants unavailable, so neither is listed. The case can also be 3D-printed from the public firmware repo's case/ directory (two STLs, MIT) — that line is the out-of-stock escape hatch, keep it. The snap-on case fits ONLY the no-headers board: never suggest the pre-soldered variant as a substitute; BerryBase's acrylic case and Botland's screw-together case share the bare-board rule, and BerryBase's is worded 'clip-together acrylic' deliberately — its page does not claim the snap-on design nor name the Pico 2 W explicitly, so the 3D-print line is the guaranteed-fit fallback. Euro amounts are allowed in THIS ENTRY ALONE: home-copy.test.mjs's euro sweep (a proxy for 'no rival price anchors') exempts landing.dongleKit because the EU list states a component vendor's own dated prices — BerryBase verified in full on 2026-08-31 (title, price, 100+ in stock, 1-3 days); Kiwi Electronics and Kubii stayed unverifiable and are NOT listed. The old /shop page and both halves of its register-interest capture are DELETED, not dormant: /shop 301s here via _redirects, and site/test/dongle-kit.test.mjs pins the redirect, the deletions and this page's vendor links. Do not re-add an interest capture to this page — dropped means deleted.", "path": "/dongle-kit", "title": "Get the dongle kit — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Get the dongle kit: three parts, about £17", "lead": [ "The wake dongle is a Raspberry Pi Pico W in a case — that is the whole bill of materials. Three off-the-shelf parts, stocked by established vendors worldwide, come to about £17, $18 or €17: the board, a snap-on case, and an official power supply with the right plug for your wall. Buy them anywhere you like; our free web flasher turns the bare board into a {{brand.name}} dongle in a few minutes, no account needed, and the firmware it writes is open source in [the repository]({{brand.repo}}).", "We used to plan selling pre-built kits. Parts this commodity are cheaper and faster for you to buy directly — the vendors below ship them every day at prices we could not better — so we publish the exact list instead and put our work into the flasher." ], "sections": [ { "title": "The recipe, and seven small facts before you order", "body": [ "Every region below is the same recipe: the board, a case that fits it, and an official 5 V supply with the right plug. The prices shown are each vendor's own, as their product pages displayed them on 31 August 2026 — treat them as indicative and trust the page you land on." ], "items": [ "**The connector is micro-USB, not USB-C.** The official supplies below have the right cable built in — just do not buy a USB-C lead expecting it to fit.", "**Buy the board without headers.** The pre-soldered version doesn't fit the snap-on case — and nothing in this recipe uses the pins anyway.", "**Either board works; the Pico 2 W is the one to buy.** It is newer at the same price, so the links point at it — but the original Pico W does the same job, and the flasher detects which board you plugged in.", "**The case is optional, but recommended.** The board runs fine bare; the case is what makes it something you can leave plugged in behind a desk for years.", "**The case is also printable.** If the snap-on case is out of stock, the exact case we designed can be 3D-printed from [the open repository]({{brand.repo}}/tree/main/case) — two STL files that print flat, no supports.", "**Wi-Fi is 2.4 GHz only, and that is fine.** Every home router still broadcasts a 2.4 GHz network, and the machine being woken can be wired or on any band — the magic packet crosses your LAN either way.", "**Flashing takes an ordinary micro-USB data cable** from board to computer for a few minutes. One from the gadget drawer works; the power supply's own cable then lives at the wall." ] }, { "title": "United Kingdom: The Pi Hut, £17.30 the lot", "items": [ "[Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W](https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-2-w) — £6.70", "[Snap-on enclosure for the Pico / W / 2 / 2 W](https://thepihut.com/products/snap-on-enclosure-for-raspberry-pi-pico-w-2-2w) — £2.90", "[Official Raspberry Pi micro-USB power supply, UK plug](https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-uk-power-supply) — £7.70" ], "also": { "label": "Other shops for these parts", "items": [ "The board is stocked at [Pimoroni](https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-2-w) — take the without-headers option.", "The official micro-USB supply is stocked at [Pimoroni](https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-12-5w-micro-usb-power-supply) too — pick the UK plug.", "Anywhere: the [official Pico 2 page](https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-2/) has a buy widget that finds an approved reseller for your country — select the Pico 2 W model." ] } }, { "title": "United States: Adafruit, $18.20 the lot", "body": [ "When we checked, the bare board was out of stock at Adafruit. Don't substitute the version with pre-soldered headers — it doesn't fit the snap-on case; if the bare board still shows out of stock, the other shops below carry it." ], "items": [ "[Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W](https://www.adafruit.com/product/6087) — $7.00", "[Snap-on enclosure for the Pico / W / 2 / 2 W](https://www.adafruit.com/product/6252) — $2.95", "[5 V 2.5 A switching power supply with micro-USB cable](https://www.adafruit.com/product/1995) — $8.25" ], "also": { "label": "Other shops for these parts", "items": [ "The bare board is stocked at [PiShop](https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-pico-2-w/) and at [DigiKey](https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC1633/25862726) — SC1633 is the no-headers part number.", "The same snap-on enclosure is stocked at [PiShop](https://www.pishop.us/product/snap-on-enclosure-for-raspberry-pi-pico-w-2-2w/).", "The official 12.5 W micro-USB supply, US plug, is stocked at [PiShop](https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-12-5w-power-supply-us-white/)." ] } }, { "title": "European Union: BerryBase, €16.90 the lot", "body": [ "BerryBase in Germany stocks all three and ships across the EU. Their case is a clip-together acrylic housing rather than the snap-on shell above — the same rule applies, it takes the bare board only — and if you would rather be certain of the fit, print our own case from the repository instead." ], "items": [ "[Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W](https://www.berrybase.de/en/raspberry-pi-pico-2w-rp2350-wlan-bluetooth-mikrocontroller-board) — €7.50", "[Clip-together acrylic case for the Pico](https://www.berrybase.de/en/acrylic-housing-for-raspberry-pi-pico) — €1.50", "[Official Raspberry Pi micro-USB power supply, EU plug](https://www.berrybase.de/en/official-raspberry-pi-micro-usb-power-supply-5.1v-2.5a-eu-white) — €7.90" ], "also": { "label": "Other shops for these parts", "items": [ "The board and the official supply are stocked at [Botland](https://botland.store/modules-and-kits-for-raspberry-pi-pico-2/25727-raspberry-pi-pico-2-w-rp2350-arm-cortex-m33-cyw43439-wifibluetooth-5056561803975.html) ([the supply is here](https://botland.store/socket-power-supply/20348-power-supply-for-raspberry-pi-3b3a3b2bzerozero-2-microusb-51v-25a-original-white-617588405747.html)) — ships EU-wide from Poland; their Pico case is a screw-together design rather than the clip-on ones above.", "The whole UK list ships across the EU too, priced in sterling: The Pi Hut stocks [the official supply in its EU-plug version](https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-eu-power-supply) alongside the board and the snap-on case.", "Anywhere: the [official Pico 2 page](https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-2/) has a buy widget that finds an approved reseller for your country — select the Pico 2 W model — and [Adafruit's distributor list](https://www.adafruit.com/distributors) finds a local stockist." ] } }, { "title": "Flash it in your browser, then set it up", "body": [ "Plug the bare board into your computer and open [{{brand.setup}}]({{brand.setup}}) — the flasher and the six-step setup both run in the browser. Nothing is installed, no account is needed to flash, and the firmware going onto the board is the same open code anyone can read in [the repository]({{brand.repo}}).", "The support line is simple: the hardware is the vendor's, so returns and warranty sit with them. The firmware, the flasher and the setup are ours, free, and ours to answer for — [{{brand.supportEmail}}](mailto:{{brand.supportEmail}})." ] } ], "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Flash it in your browser", "href": "{{brand.setup}}" }, { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] } }, "island": { "$note": "Philip's island decision (2026-08-11): competitor NAMES are allowed under island.* and ONLY here — these pages exist for search and generative engines, sit in the sitemap, and are linked from NO page of the site, so the catalogue's name-free rule keeps governing everything a browsing customer reads. island-copy.test.mjs pins the island property (nothing links in) and home-copy's rivals ban excludes exactly this subtree; every OTHER catalogue-wide guard (push attribution, self-wake physics, no rival prices, no euro anchors) still applies to these strings. Claims about named rivals were verified against their own documentation on 2026-08-11 (TeamViewer KB, Splashtop KB, UpSnap README, the wolskill.com 301, a 2022 no-payment-step WOLSkill tutorial) — re-verify before editing a rival's section, and never quote a rival's price: prices date, and a wrong claim about a named rival is worse than no page. wakepc.app's section (2026-09-06) was written from its own site and store listing as read on 2026-09-05 — an iPhone app, a one-time purchase, wake and shutdown, and a Windows-versus-Mac support matrix — and states nothing else: no remote-from-outside-the-network claim, no sleep, no keep-awake, no schedule, no Android, because none of those was on the page. Voice sentences state the live skill as fact (alexa_live flipped 2026-08-11); if the skill is ever withdrawn, this page must be edited in the same pass as agent.html.", "comparison": { "path": "/wake-on-lan-services-compared", "title": "Wake-on-LAN services compared: RemoteRelay, TeamViewer, Splashtop, UpSnap, wakepc.app and Alexa skills — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Wake-on-LAN services and tools, compared", "lead": [ "Every way of waking a PC over the internet needs something inside your network to broadcast the magic packet — a cloud alone cannot deliver one. What actually separates RemoteRelay, the remote-desktop suites, the self-hosted dashboards, the paid phone apps, the free Alexa skills and {{brand.name}} is what that something is: what has to stay powered on, what gets installed, what is exposed to the internet, and whether anything can tell you the machine actually came up.", "Because this page names names, it owes them fairness: where a rival shape is the right answer, it says so. And one claim you can stop comparing on — \"no port forwarding\" is true of every serious product here, ours included. Treat it as the baseline and ask the questions above instead." ], "sections": [ { "title": "RemoteRelay — formerly the free WOLSkill Alexa skill", "body": [ "RemoteRelay is the biggest name in the software shape: an app installed on each computer, linked to an account, and controlled through Alexa like a smart home device — waking is the base capability, and actions beyond it are gated by plan. It began life as WOLSkill, a free Alexa skill — walkthroughs from 2022 show a setup with no payment step at all — and the old wolskill.com now redirects to RemoteRelay's subscription service.", "Two questions to ask of this shape. The packet still has to come from something awake on your own network — an Echo, or another computer running the app; a machine that is off cannot be woken by software installed on itself. And WOLSkill's own history is a reminder that a hosted service's pricing and terms are the vendor's to change — a risk worth asking every service on this page about, ours included; our answer is at the bottom." ] }, { "title": "TeamViewer and Splashtop — the wake as a remote-desktop accessory", "body": [ "If you already pay for a remote-desktop suite, its wake feature may be all you need, and both of the big ones have one. The requirement to know about before relying on it: Splashtop's documentation says waking needs at least one additional computer on the target network, awake, with its software installed; TeamViewer offers the same another-device route, or a router port-forward from your public address to the network's broadcast address. So the wake rides either a second machine you leave on, or the open port this category otherwise exists to avoid.", "That is not a criticism — remote desktop is what you are buying there, and the wake is an accessory. It becomes the wrong shape when the always-on second machine is the thing you were trying to eliminate." ] }, { "title": "UpSnap and the self-hosted dashboards", "body": [ "For a homelab, self-hosting is a genuinely good answer and UpSnap is a genuinely good tool: a clean dashboard, scheduled wakes, a one-container install. You supply the two things a hosted service supplies for you — an always-on box to run it on, and the remote path to reach it. UpSnap's own documentation says not to expose it to the open web and to use a VPN instead, which is the right advice and is also a project: WireGuard or a mesh network, name resolution, and keeping all of it patched.", "What you give up relative to a service is the part around the wake: nothing reports an answer to your phone, there are no invitations with their own sign-ins, and the maintenance is yours. If that reads like a satisfying weekend rather than a chore, this is your shape." ] }, { "title": "The free Alexa wake skills", "body": [ "A class of genuinely free skills wakes a PC by voice, using the Echo you already own as the sender. For a wake now and then they are enough — we would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise, and it is why {{brand.name}} has a free plan with a free Alexa route of its own.", "The limits are structural rather than stingy: Alexa knows it broadcast something onto your network, and nothing whatsoever after that. No skill of this shape can confirm the machine came up, keep a history with the reason a wake failed, or run a schedule that retries — those need something of yours on the network answering to a service." ] }, { "title": "wakepc.app — the wake as a phone app bought once", "body": [ "wakepc.app is the phone-app shape: an iPhone app, bought outright rather than subscribed to, that sends the wake packet and can shut a machine down again. Its site publishes a Windows-versus-Mac support matrix, which is the right thing for a wake tool to publish and the part to read before you buy — a Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only and never from full power-off, so what any tool can do differs by platform whether or not it says so.", "Bought once rather than rented, it asks a smaller commitment than any subscription on this page, ours included, and if a wake and a shutdown from an iPhone are the whole job that is the shape to weigh. The questions to put to it are the ones this page puts to everything else. Something inside your network has to send the packet, and a phone is inside your network only while you are at home — so ask what sends it when you are not. Then ask what answers back: whether anything confirms the machine came up, keeps the attempt on record with the reason it failed, or runs to a schedule while the phone is in a pocket." ] }, { "title": "{{brand.name}} — and the same questions asked of us", "body": [ "{{brand.name}}'s emitter is a half-watt dongle plugged in near your router, or the same emitter as a free software agent installed on any machine you already leave on — a Raspberry Pi, a NAS, a home server. Nothing has to be installed on the PC you are waking, nothing listens inbound, and the free plan is a real product rather than a trial: one machine, unlimited wakes, no expiry, and its last ten attempts on record with the reason any failed. Where our agent differs from the app-on-every-computer shape above is that it is optional on the machine you are waking: waking never needs it, and what it adds there is sleep, restart and shutdown on the paid plans.", "The paid plans are the part around the wake: a probe after every wake, so your history says \"came up\" or \"did not, and here is the likely reason\", with the answer pushed to your phone on the paid plans; server-side schedules that retry; people with their own sign-ins and, on Pro, roles; and a revocable wake link for someone with no account at all.", "And the vendor-risk question this page asked of RemoteRelay deserves a symmetric answer rather than a promise: our firmware is open, the wire protocol is published, and the reference relay is AGPL and self-hostable. If we vanished — or you would simply rather run it yourself — the dongle points at your own relay from its setup page and keeps working." ] }, { "title": "Which should you pick", "items": [ "**You already pay for TeamViewer or Splashtop and leave a second machine on anyway** — use their wake feature; another service buys you little.", "**You run a homelab with a VPN already in place** — UpSnap is excellent, and the maintenance is part of the hobby.", "**You want a voice wake now and then and own an Echo** — a free skill does it, ours included.", "**You want a wake and a shutdown from an iPhone, bought once rather than subscribed to** — a paid app of that shape covers both.", "**You want to know the wake worked, wake on a schedule, or let other people wake machines** — that is the part around the wake, and it is what {{brand.name}}'s paid plans are.", "**You want no computer left running at all** — the half-watt dongle is the only shape on this page that does the job with no PC, NAS or Pi kept awake." ] } ], "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] } }, "guides": { "$note": "The persona guides (2026-08-12), Philip's GEO cat-nip idea: one overview article on who uses Wake-on-LAN and five how-to guides written as onboarding documentation for a named kind of reader. They render through js/landing.js exactly as landing.* does — names the dotted key — and each has a path in site/tools/gen-brand.mjs PAGES, a static HTML shell, a canonical and a JSON-LD graph; site/test/guides-copy.test.mjs pins all of that together. Unlike the island comparison page these ARE linked: the footer carries a Guides group, the overview links to all five and each guide links back to the overview, because a guide a customer cannot find is documentation nobody reads. THREE RULES for every sentence here. (1) It has to be true for the plan it is attributed to — every paid capability names its plan, because these pages are read by people deciding what to buy and a guide that quietly assumes Pro is a sales page wearing a support-doc costume. (2) Voice is not sold on these pages at all, for the reason landing.$note gives: a static file cannot ask /api/flags, so a claim that depends on the skill still being published does not belong in one. (3) They answer the reader's question first and funnel second — including saying plainly where a simpler answer than ours is the right one, which is the same balanced-source voice that makes the island page citable. NO RIVAL IS NAMED and none may be: the rescoped rule allows names inside an object declaring \"$compare\": true, and none of these declares it, because a guide compares a reader's OPTIONS (agent against dongle, plug against packet, sleep against leaving it on) rather than products. Linking to the island comparison is also forbidden — island-copy.test.mjs sweeps every other page and every non-island string for its path, since discovery there is the sitemap alone. The persona set was closed at six — the sixth (2026-08-30) is the Remote AI developer guide, whose extra rules live in its own $note — and the SEVENTH (2026-09-05) is not a persona at all but the plain how-to they specialise, guides.wakeAnyPc, with its own $note; adding one means its page, its sitemap row, its footer link and its entry in the test key list. EVERY GUIDE CARRIES A BYLINE (2026-09-05): `author`, `datePublished`, `dateModified` feed the TechArticle JSON-LD and `byline` is the visible line under the h1 — the same person and the published date, pinned together by guides-copy.test.mjs. NO VERSION HISTORY: a new user installs the latest build, which carries every earlier feature, so a page says what the agent does and never the build it began in — no 'from agent 0.x', 'new in 0.x', 'since 0.x' anywhere in the catalogue; guides-copy.test.mjs sweeps every rendered string. A requirement floor ('Claude Code X.Y.Z or newer') is not history and is exempted by path; nothing else is exempt, and the sweep runs over the whole catalogue.", "overview": { "path": "/who-uses-wake-on-lan", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-08-12", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 12 August 2026", "title": "Who uses Wake-on-LAN, and what for — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Who uses Wake-on-LAN, and what for", "lead": [ "A computer is useful while it is running and wasteful, hot and noisy when it is left that way for nothing. The arrangement that fixes that is the same for everybody: the machine sleeps by default, stays awake while it is genuinely being used, goes back to sleep afterwards — and comes back when you ask for it. Wake-on-LAN, a mechanism from the late 1990s, is that last step, and it is the step whose answer depends on the hardware you own. Six quite different kinds of people arrive at it from six different directions, and they need different things once they get there.", "This page is the map. It covers who reaches for Wake-on-LAN and why, what each of them actually needs beyond the packet itself, and — because it matters more than the sales pitch — where a simpler answer than any of this is the right one. If you want the steps before the map, [how to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) is the plain walkthrough for any machine, and [how to wake a Mac remotely](/wake-a-mac-remotely) the Mac's own, Wi-Fi caveat included." ], "sections": [ { "title": "The one thing all five have in common", "body": [ "A desktop idling does something between 40 and 100 watts, and a machine with a serious graphics card can sit well above that doing nothing at all. Asleep, the same machine draws roughly two to five watts, and it comes back in a couple of seconds with every window where you left it. The gap between those two numbers is the entire reason Wake-on-LAN exists.", "What the protocol gives you is one thing only: a specially formed broadcast — the magic packet — that a network card listens for while the rest of the machine is off. There is no acknowledgement, no status, no reply. It is a doorbell with no intercom, and everything anyone builds on top of it is an answer to that." ] }, { "title": "Gamers, and the rig that should not idle", "body": [ "A gaming PC is the worst machine in the house to leave running and the best one to reach remotely. Somebody who streams from their own rig to a handheld, a laptop or a TV wants the machine asleep between sessions and awake about fifteen seconds before they start playing — then asleep again afterwards, without walking to the desk.", "What they need beyond the packet: the wake and the connection in one motion, so the streaming client opens the moment the machine is actually up rather than a hopeful few seconds later. [Waking a gaming PC remotely](/wake-gaming-pc-remotely) covers the setup, the BIOS settings that stop it working, and the handoff. [Waking your PC for Steam Link, Moonlight or Parsec](/wake-pc-for-remote-play) is the streaming client's version of the same page: wake, confirm, connect, then sleep it again." ] }, { "title": "Remote workers, and the desktop somewhere else", "body": [ "The machine with the licences, the local files and the environment on it is at the office or at home, and the person who needs it is not. The path most people fall into is leaving it running and opening a Remote Desktop port at the router — which is how a large share of ransomware gets its first foothold, and how most people who have done it find out.", "What they need beyond the packet: a way to reach the machine that does not involve an open door, and a way to know it woke before they are sitting in a hotel with a laptop. [Waking your work PC from home](/wake-work-pc-from-home) covers the safe shape, the checks to run before you travel, and the sign-in trap that catches people who use a PIN or a fingerprint on the machine they are trying to reach. A student away in term time has the same problem with the desktop at home, and a network in halls they cannot change: [waking your home PC from university](/wake-home-pc-from-university) covers that shape, the family sender included. And if the tool is the problem — the PC has gone to sleep by the time the client connects — [remote desktop, but the PC is asleep](/remote-desktop-wakes-the-pc) is the page for that." ] }, { "title": "Households and businesses where more than one person needs the machines", "body": [ "The moment a second person needs to wake something, the usual answer is to pass a password around — and passwords that get passed around do not get revoked when somebody leaves. A family sharing a media server and a five-person office sharing a till PC and a design workstation have the same problem in different clothes.", "What they need beyond the packet: separate sign-ins with different rights, a record of who did what, and revocation that takes one click. [Wake-on-LAN for a team](/wake-on-lan-for-teams) covers the role ladder, sharing single machines rather than whole accounts, and handing somebody a wake button when they have no account at all." ] }, { "title": "IT teams with a patch window and a fleet", "body": [ "Updates land on machines that are switched off overnight, which means either patching during the working day or somebody walking the floor pressing power buttons. Waking a fleet at 02:00, letting the updates run, restarting them and putting them back to sleep is the oldest legitimate use of this protocol there is.", "What they need beyond the packet: schedules that retry and report, a restart after the updates land, the same action across a whole site at once, and a record they can hand to somebody who asks. [Wake-on-LAN for patch windows](/wake-on-lan-for-patching) covers all four." ] }, { "title": "Homelabs and NAS owners, who already own the hard part", "body": [ "Anyone with a Raspberry Pi, a NAS or a small server humming in a cupboard already has the thing everybody else has to buy: a machine that never sleeps and can put a broadcast on the local network. What they usually want is the opposite of a purchase — to use what is already there, and to spin the big power-hungry box up only when a job needs it.", "What they need beyond the packet: software on the always-on box, and the arithmetic about when a dedicated device beats it. [Wake-on-LAN for a homelab](/wake-on-lan-homelab-nas) covers both, along with self-hosting the whole service. The server that should sleep between jobs — up for an SSH session or the nightly copy, asleep again after, with no inhibitor script — is [sleep your Linux box and still SSH in](/sleep-your-linux-box-and-still-ssh-in)." ] }, { "title": "Developers, and the machine a coding agent needs awake", "body": [ "The newest arrival, and the oldest problem wearing new clothes. Claude Code's remote control lets a developer drive a live coding session from a phone or any browser — but the session runs on a real machine, and that machine has to be awake, with the session started at its own keyboard. So the dev box stays on all night for a session that runs two hours, or somebody keeps a remote-desktop route open just to type one command into a terminal the size of a postage stamp.", "What they need beyond the packet: the wake, a hold that keeps the machine up exactly as long as the session and no longer, the session started with nobody at the keyboard, and the handoff into the Claude app. [Running Claude Code remotely on a PC that sleeps](/run-claude-code-remotely) covers the one-button version of all four, the setup, and the traps nobody else documents." ] }, { "title": "Where a simpler answer is the right one", "body": [ "Not every version of this problem needs a service, and a page that pretended otherwise would not be worth citing. If the machine is a headless box you leave on anyway, waking it is a solved problem — do nothing. If you need a machine cold-booted rather than resumed, and its motherboard is set to power on after a power loss, a smart plug does that for the price of a takeaway. If you own a voice assistant and one machine, a free skill can broadcast the packet for you.", "And there are cases where Wake-on-LAN itself is the wrong tool. A target on Wi-Fi rather than Ethernet is best-effort at best: waking over Wi-Fi means WoWLAN, support varies by adapter and driver, and key rotation on the network interferes with it. A machine behind client isolation, on a guest SSID, or on a different VLAN from your emitter cannot be reached at all — a broadcast physically does not cross those boundaries, and no product can change that.", "Where it does fit, the question is not whether something can send the packet. Everything can. It is what happens afterwards: whether anything checks the machine came up, whether anyone can tell you why it did not, and whether the arrangement survives the person who set it up leaving." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "What is Wake-on-LAN, in plain terms?", "a": "A standard that lets a network card listen while the rest of the computer is asleep or off. Send it a magic packet — a broadcast containing the card's MAC address repeated sixteen times — and the card tells the motherboard to power the machine up. It is built into essentially every wired network adapter made in the last twenty years, so there is nothing to install on the machine you are waking. It has to be enabled in the BIOS and in the adapter's settings, which is where almost every \"it does not work\" ends up." }, { "q": "Does Wake-on-LAN work over the internet?", "a": "Not by itself. A magic packet is a local broadcast, and routers do not forward broadcasts — no ISP will carry one to your house. What works is something inside your network holding an outbound connection to a service, so a request from outside comes down a connection your network already opened. That is how every product in this category does it, and it is why [none of them need you to forward a port](/wake-on-lan-without-port-forwarding)." }, { "q": "Do I need to install software on the PC I want to wake?", "a": "No. Waking is done by the network card, below the operating system, so nothing has to be installed on the target — that is the whole point of the protocol. Software on the machine only becomes necessary for the opposite direction: putting a machine to sleep, restarting it or shutting it down means asking the operating system to do it, and that needs something running there. In {{brand.name}} that is the optional [agent](/agent), and those power actions are on the paid plans." }, { "q": "How much does leaving a PC switched on actually cost?", "a": "Take the machine's idle draw in watts, multiply by 8,760 hours in a year, divide by 1,000 for kilowatt-hours, and multiply by your electricity rate. A desktop idling at 60 W is a little over 500 kWh a year; the same machine asleep at 3 W is about 26. Whether that is worth acting on depends entirely on your tariff and how many machines you have — which is why the number is a sum here rather than a claim." }, { "q": "Smart plug or Wake-on-LAN?", "a": "A smart plug cuts and restores mains power, so it cold-boots the machine — and only if the motherboard is configured to power on after a power loss. You lose whatever was open, and repeated hard power cycling is not kind to hardware. A magic packet resumes a sleeping machine with everything where you left it, in a couple of seconds. If you want the machine back exactly as it was, you want the packet; if you genuinely want it restarted from cold, the plug is cheaper." }, { "q": "Which of these six is {{brand.name}} for?", "a": "All six, at different plans, and the free plan is a real answer for the first version of any of them: one machine, unlimited wakes, the dashboard, and the last ten attempts on record with the reason any of them failed. What the paid plans add is everything around the wake — confirmation that the machine came up, schedules, sleep and shutdown through the agent, other people with their own sign-ins, and the fleet features. Each guide above names the plan that carries the feature it describes, and the [plans page](/#pricing) is the complete list." } ], "faqTitle": "Common questions about Wake-on-LAN", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "wakeAnyPc": { "$note": "The plain how-to (2026-09-05, Philip's decision): the page for the search the site had no page for — 'how to wake a PC remotely' — built the way the page-one winners are built: a named author and a visible date, numbered steps, EVERY method rather than the packet alone, real screenshots, a Windows-versus-Mac section, troubleshooting, a comparison table and an FAQ. It is the seventh guide and the one the six persona guides are specialisations of, so the overview and the two persona guides link into it and it links back. Extra rules on top of guides.$note. THE BYLINE: `byline` is the visible line under the h1 and `author`/`datePublished`/`dateModified` are what the JSON-LD TechArticle states; guides-copy.test.mjs pins the byline to the author and the published date, so the page and its markup cannot disagree. THE TABLES: a section may carry `table` in the home page's routes shape — columns and rows of inline-markup cells — rendered by site/tools/prose.mjs tableHtml and js/landing.js table in parity; the routes table here MUST hold the same four rows, in the same order, with the same cost and limit facts as `routes` on the home page (pinned), because two answers to 'what sends it' on one site would be the bug. The comparison table names NO rival — it compares shapes (a remote-desktop tool's built-in wake, a router, a VPN, leaving it on) and the guide declares no $compare — and it does NOT link the island page, whose discovery is the sitemap alone. ALEXA: every string that says Alexa or Echo carries the skill's store URL, the licence guides.$note records for the Remote AI guide; the screenshot alts, the row ids and the comparison cells therefore say 'voice' where the product name would need a link. THE SCREENSHOTS are real dashboard rows (media/README.md rule 3); the Windows settings panel is a DRAWN illustration of the setting names, labelled as such in the image and in its caption, never a fabricated dialog. PLAN ATTRIBUTION as everywhere: sleep is ten a month on Free (TIERS.free.sleeps, said in words), unmetered on Plus and Pro; keep-awake, restart, shutdown, schedules, the API, confirmation and the plug's power actions name their plans in the same sentence; wake links name Pro. The meter's-end sentence (the machine sleeps by itself when a keep-awake timer ends unless somebody is at it; a plug-powered machine shuts down cleanly and the switch stays on) is the 0068 verdict — on Windows, macOS and Linux. LENGTH: 2,500 to 3,200 words of visible text, the band the page-one winners sit in; guides-copy.test.mjs holds it.", "path": "/wake-a-pc-remotely", "title": "How to wake a PC remotely, and put it back to sleep after — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "How to wake a PC remotely, and put it back to sleep after", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-09-05", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 5 September 2026", "lead": [ "A PC left on for the sake of the odd remote session is a heater with a fan in it, and one switched off is no use from the other side of town. The arrangement that answers both is set up once and then forgotten: the machine sleeps by default, holds itself awake while you are using it, drops back to sleep ten minutes after you stop, and comes back when you ask. That last step is Wake-on-LAN — in every wired network card for twenty-five years — and the one that depends on what your hardware can do, which is why its instructions are scattered across BIOS menus, adapter dialogs and router forums, and most of them stop at the packet.", "This is the whole job in five steps: make the machine wakeable, choose what sends the packet, send it from anywhere, know that it woke, and put it back to sleep afterwards. It covers every way of sending the wake — a phone, a voice assistant, a smart plug, a dashboard, an always-on box, a remote-desktop tool — says where a Mac or a laptop differs, and ends with the six reasons a wake fails." ], "sections": [ { "title": "What waking a PC remotely actually needs", "body": [ "Three things, and every method here is a way of arranging them. The machine has to be asleep rather than off — asleep, the network card stays powered and listens; fully off, most PCs listen only if the BIOS keeps the card fed, and a Mac never does. A magic packet — a broadcast carrying the card's own address — has to be delivered on the machine's own network, because routers do not carry broadcasts in from the internet. And something you can reach from outside has to send it.", "The old answer to the third part was the router: forward a port to the broadcast address and fire the packet at your public IP. Most routers refuse, the rest need a static IP or a dynamic-DNS name, and the door faces the whole internet — [Wake-on-LAN without port forwarding](/wake-on-lan-without-port-forwarding) covers the mechanics, and [the exposed Remote Desktop check](/exposed-remote-desktop) what the same habit does to the machine you then connect to. What replaced it: something inside the network holds a connection out to a service, and the packet goes out from inside." ] }, { "title": "Step 1 — make the PC wakeable (Windows)", "body": [ "Do this at the machine, before anything else; nothing later on this page can compensate for a setting here. Four places, in this order — each can hide the next. With the free [agent](/agent) on a Windows PC, the **Wake readiness** section in the machine's settings on the dashboard reads the second and third for you and offers to fix both." ], "media": { "src": "/media/windows-wake-settings.9db9f8e5.svg", "width": 960, "height": 420, "alt": "Three panels naming the settings: Wake on LAN enabled and ErP Ready disabled in the BIOS; Allow this device to wake the computer, Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer and Wake on Magic Packet enabled on the Ethernet adapter; Turn on fast startup unticked in Power Options.", "caption": "The settings by their names — an illustration, not a screenshot, because the dialogs differ by board and driver." }, "ordered": true, "items": [ "**BIOS or UEFI: turn on Wake on LAN.** Boards call it **Wake on LAN**, **Power On By PCI-E**, **Resume by LAN** or **Wake on PCI-E**, usually under Power. If the board has **ErP Ready**, **EuP 2013** or a deep-sleep option, turn it off: it cuts standby power to the network card and undoes everything else here.", "**Device Manager: let the adapter wake the machine.** On the Ethernet adapter's *Power Management* tab, tick **Allow this device to wake the computer** and **Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer** — the second stops stray broadcasts waking it at three in the morning. On the *Advanced* tab set **Wake on Magic Packet** to **Enabled**; some drivers add a *Wake on LAN after shutdown* entry for the shut-down case.", "**Power Options: turn fast startup off.** *Control Panel, Power Options, Choose what the power buttons do, Change settings that are currently unavailable*, then untick **Turn on fast startup**. With it on, Shut down is a partial hibernation on which Windows parks the network card un-armed — the single most common reason a correctly configured PC never wakes.", "**Use the cable.** Ethernet wakes reliably. Wi-Fi wakes rarely, only from sleep, and only when the adapter, its driver and the router's key rotation all cooperate; a laptop on Wi-Fi is not a candidate at all." ] }, { "title": "Step 2 — choose what sends the packet", "body": [ "The packet has to leave from inside the machine's own network, so the choice is which always-on thing in the house does the sending. Four things can, the first two you may already own, and any one is enough." ], "table": { "hint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column.", "columns": [ { "id": "cost", "label": "What it costs" }, { "id": "triggers", "label": "What can trigger it" }, { "id": "limit", "label": "The one limit" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "voice", "label": "[An Amazon Echo you already own](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT)", "detail": "Our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has the Echo broadcast the packet on your home network.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", and a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from anywhere in the world.", "limit": "Voice and the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links on Pro, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below." } }, { "id": "agent", "label": "The free agent on a machine that already stays on", "detail": "A NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box, a mini PC — or a container on any of them.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, voice and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro.", "limit": "Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on." } }, { "id": "plug", "label": "A certified smart plug", "detail": "For a machine that starts when power is applied — most desktop PCs can be set to, and Apple-silicon desktop Macs do. [The certified models](/certified-power-switches).", "cells": { "cost": "About £10", "triggers": "Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans.", "limit": "The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume." } }, { "id": "dongle", "label": "A dongle you build", "detail": "A Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the network with no always-on machine. The [parts list](/dongle-kit) names them.", "cells": { "cost": "About £17 in parts", "triggers": "Everything the agent carries.", "limit": "A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case." } } ] }, "items": [ "**The Echo.** [Enable the skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), link your {{brand.name}} account, and give it the machine's name and network address; your own Echo then puts the packet on your own network, which is why it is free on every plan.", "**The free agent on a box that stays on.** [Install it](/agent) on a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box or a second PC — or [as a container on the NAS](/nas) — and that box sends for every other machine on the network. It cannot wake the machine it is installed on: software on a sleeping PC is asleep with it.", "**A certified smart plug.** For the machine that is genuinely off, or frozen: it cuts and restores the mains, and a PC set to start when power returns boots from cold. An agent or dongle on the same network drives it, on the paid plans.", "**A dongle you build.** A Raspberry Pi Pico W in a printed case, for the household where nothing stays on: half a watt, and everything the agent carries." ] }, { "title": "Step 3 — send it from anywhere", "body": [ "With a sender in place the machine is a row on your dashboard, and the row carries a green **Wake** button. Press it from any browser or the phone app and the packet goes out on your network a second or two later. The row reads the machine's state — off at its plug offers the plug's Wake, asleep offers the packet's.", "The button is one of seven ways to ask. Voice, \"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", through [the free skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from the Echo or the Alexa app anywhere. A **schedule**, on the paid plans: up at eight on weekdays, with retries and a record. A **wake link** on Pro: a URL that wakes one machine, for someone with no account. The **API**, on the paid plans, for your own scripts and a Siri Shortcut. And Claude, through the connector on every plan: \"wake the office PC\" in any Claude chat does it, and [running Claude Code remotely](/run-claude-code-remotely) covers the rest of that door.", "The Echo carries voice and the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) and nothing else; the agent and the dongle carry all seven. Started with the Echo and want the button? Add the agent to something that stays on; the skill keeps working beside it." ], "media": { "src": "/media/wake-row.8a5654b8.png", "width": 949, "height": 236, "alt": "A machine row on the dashboard reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now', a power chip showing 0 W, the phrase to say to the voice assistant, and a green Wake button.", "caption": "A real row: this machine is off at its plug, so the green **Wake** is the plug's — the same button, whichever route the machine needs." } }, { "title": "Step 4 — know it woke, then connect", "body": [ "Wake-on-LAN has no acknowledgement: the packet goes out and nothing comes back. Two things can tell you it landed. With the free [agent](/agent) on the PC itself, the agent reconnects the moment the machine is up and the row turns green — **up now — agent connected** — on every plan, usually within twenty seconds. And on Plus and Pro, wake confirmation watches your own network for the machine answering after the packet and tells you it came up, or that it did not and the likely reason, pushed to your phone.", "Then connect with whatever you use: Remote Desktop, Chrome Remote Desktop, Moonlight or Parsec for a gaming rig, SSH for a server. Store the client's own link against the machine and, on Plus and Pro, the dashboard offers a **Connect** button the moment confirmation says the machine is up. If you use Remote Desktop and unlock that PC with a PIN or a fingerprint, read [the sign-in trap](/wake-work-pc-from-home) before you are somewhere else with a laptop." ], "media": { "src": "/media/up-now-row.d2bcc050.png", "width": 949, "height": 235, "alt": "A machine row reading 'up now — agent connected — held awake until 12:18', with Remote AI and Remote Desktop buttons and, below, the Sleep button beside the hold, restart and shutdown controls.", "caption": "After the wake, with the free agent on the machine: **up now — agent connected**, and the controls for the other direction." } }, { "title": "Step 5 — put it back to sleep", "body": [ "Waking needs nothing on the PC; sleeping does, because something has to ask the operating system to suspend. That is the free [agent](/agent) on the machine itself, and with it there the row carries **Sleep**: press it from the dashboard, the phone app or a Claude chat and the machine suspends in seconds, to two to five watts. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add **Restart…** and **Shut down…** beside it.", "**Keep awake…**, on Plus and Pro, is the other half: hold the machine up for a window you choose — a download, a build, a remote session — and the row shows the deadline. When the timer ends the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it, on Windows, macOS and Linux. A machine on a certified plug shuts down cleanly instead, because it comes back by cold boot rather than resume, and the switch stays on for the next **Wake** to cycle. A schedule does the same on a timetable, on the paid plans." ], "media": { "src": "/media/plug-off-row.fd220635.png", "width": 949, "height": 507, "alt": "A machine row reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now' with its power popover open: 'feed on, drawing nothing — the machine is off, or unplugged from the switch as of 5 d ago', 'hard recovery verified', the label WALL POWER, and a green Wake button below.", "caption": "A plug-powered machine after a clean shutdown: the switch stays on, drawing nothing, and the row's **Wake** turns it back on." } }, { "title": "Macs and laptops, plainly", "body": [ "A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off. Turn on **Wake for network access** — Apple's name for the same thing, and the free agent on the Mac offers to do it for you, with **Prepare for wake** — keep the Mac on mains, and a packet on the wired network brings it back from sleep in a second or two. Nothing brings a shut-down Mac back by packet; the hardware does not keep the port armed in that state, and no product changes that.", "An Apple-silicon desktop Mac — a Mac mini, a Mac Studio, an iMac — starts when power is applied, which is what makes the certified plug the route from off: cut and restore the mains and it boots from cold, on the paid plans, with the same **Wake** button. A MacBook does not, and a MacBook on Wi-Fi is any laptop on Wi-Fi: it cannot be woken by packet at all. A laptop on a dock with a cable is a desktop for these purposes; off the dock, nothing on this page reaches it. A Linux desktop follows the Windows shape without the fast-startup step; the free agent's **Prepare for wake** sets the adapter to wake the machine and keeps it set through every restart, and the [compatibility check](/#checker) has the commands for doing it by hand. A Linux box that should stay up while an SSH shell or a file transfer is active and sleep ten minutes after has its own page: [sleep your Linux box and still SSH in](/sleep-your-linux-box-and-still-ssh-in). [How to wake a Mac remotely](/wake-a-mac-remotely) is the Mac's own page." ] }, { "title": "Troubleshooting — the six usual causes", "body": [ "Nearly every \"it does not wake\" is one of these six, each with a check you can run at the desk. Work down the list: the top ones are the most common, and each can mask the next." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**The adapter setting is off.** Check Device Manager, the Ethernet adapter: **Allow this device to wake the computer** ticked under *Power Management*, **Wake on Magic Packet** Enabled under *Advanced*. A driver update can silently reset both; with the free agent on the machine, the dashboard's **Wake readiness** section catches it and offers the fix.", "**Fast startup is on, and you shut down.** The machine is hibernated, not off, and the card is parked un-armed. Check *Choose what the power buttons do*: **Turn on fast startup** unticked. Or sleep the machine instead — sleep is the state the packet is best at.", "**The machine was off, not asleep.** From full power-off a PC listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed and the driver's after-shutdown wake is on; a Mac never listens. Check: sleep it, send the wake, and if that works the missing setting is the BIOS one.", "**It is on Wi-Fi.** Check whether the cable is in. Waking over Wi-Fi works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop.", "**Wrong network.** A broadcast does not cross a VLAN, a guest Wi-Fi, a client-isolated network or, on some mesh systems, a different node. Check that the sender and the machine share a segment — same switch, off the guest network.", "**A BIOS power setting.** ErP Ready, EuP 2013, deep sleep, or a mode that cuts the standby rail. Check the BIOS's power page with all of those off and Wake on LAN on — and take the right address: `getmac /v`, the **Ethernet** row, never a virtual adapter's." ] }, { "title": "How this compares with the other ways to do it", "body": [ "Five realistic ways to reach a PC that is not on, on the five things people ask about them. The alternatives are not wrong — a VPN you already run carries the packet fine — but none of them does the second half: telling you it worked, and putting the machine back to sleep.", "If your machine is a particular shape of problem — a gaming rig, a work PC, a fleet to patch, a NAS in a cupboard — [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan) maps the six common ones and points at the guide for each." ], "table": { "hint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column.", "columns": [ { "id": "need", "label": "What you need" }, { "id": "exposes", "label": "What it exposes" }, { "id": "phone", "label": "Works from a phone" }, { "id": "off", "label": "Wakes from full off" }, { "id": "sleep", "label": "Puts it back to sleep" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "this", "label": "This arrangement", "cells": { "need": "One of the four senders above; the free agent on the PC only to sleep it.", "exposes": "Nothing — every connection is outbound.", "phone": "Yes: dashboard, phone app, voice, a Claude chat.", "off": "By packet where the BIOS allows; from any state with a certified plug, on the paid plans.", "sleep": "Yes — **Sleep** through the free agent, and by itself when a keep-awake timer ends, on Plus and Pro." } }, { "id": "tool", "label": "A remote-desktop tool's built-in wake", "cells": { "need": "A second machine on the same network, awake, running the tool and signed in.", "exposes": "Nothing extra — those tools dial out too.", "phone": "Usually, through the tool's own app.", "off": "By packet where the BIOS allows.", "sleep": "From inside a session, if the tool offers it." } }, { "id": "router", "label": "A router with port forwarding", "cells": { "need": "A router that forwards to a broadcast address — many refuse — and a static IP or dynamic DNS.", "exposes": "An open port on your router answering the whole internet.", "phone": "Yes, with a packet-sender app.", "off": "By packet where the BIOS allows.", "sleep": "No." } }, { "id": "vpn", "label": "A VPN into your own network", "cells": { "need": "An always-on VPN endpoint and the client on every device.", "exposes": "The VPN service: one hardened port, or none with a mesh-style network.", "phone": "Yes, with the VPN client and a packet-sender app.", "off": "By packet where the BIOS allows.", "sleep": "Only through a remote-desktop or SSH session on the PC." } }, { "id": "on", "label": "Leaving the PC on", "cells": { "need": "Nothing — and forty to a hundred watts, every hour of the year.", "exposes": "Whatever is listening on it — usually a forwarded Remote Desktop port.", "phone": "It is already on.", "off": "It is never off.", "sleep": "No — that is the point." } } ] } } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Can I wake a PC that is shut down?", "a": "Sometimes, and it is a different setting from waking it from sleep. Asleep, the card is on the standby rail and armed, so the adapter settings are enough. Fully off, the BIOS Wake on LAN option has to keep the card fed — the one setting no agent can reach — and Windows fast startup has to be off, or Shut down is a partial hibernation with the card parked un-armed. A Mac never wakes by packet from full power-off; for a machine that must come back from genuinely off, a certified smart plug does it by cold boot on the paid plans." }, { "q": "Does Wake-on-LAN work over Wi-Fi?", "a": "Rarely, and only from sleep. The adapter has to hold its place on the network through sleep and listen for the packet; support varies by adapter and driver, key rotation interferes, and Modern Standby complicates it further. A laptop on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all. A desktop with a cable is a yes; a desktop on Wi-Fi is a maybe worth testing at the desk with the [compatibility check](/#checker)." }, { "q": "Can I remote into a PC that is asleep?", "a": "No — a sleeping machine is running nothing, so there is nothing for a remote-desktop client to connect to. Every method on this page keeps the same order: wake, wait for the machine to come up, then connect. With the free agent on the PC the row reads **up now — agent connected** when it is ready. The [work-PC guide](/wake-work-pc-from-home) covers reaching it safely, and the sign-in trap that catches people who unlock with a PIN or a fingerprint." }, { "q": "How do I wake a Mac remotely?", "a": "From sleep, over Ethernet, with **Wake for network access** on and the Mac on mains power — then any sender on this page works exactly as for a PC. A Mac cannot be woken by packet from full power-off, and a MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all. An Apple-silicon desktop Mac starts when power is applied, so a certified smart plug on the paid plans boots a Mac mini or Mac Studio from cold." }, { "q": "Do I need to open a port on my router?", "a": "No, and you should not. A magic packet is a local broadcast, most routers will not forward one in from the internet, and the ones that do leave a port open to the world for a packet you send twice a day. Every sender on this page connects outward instead, so the packet goes out from inside your own network and your public IP changing does not matter. [Wake-on-LAN without port forwarding](/wake-on-lan-without-port-forwarding) covers the mechanics." }, { "q": "How do I know it woke?", "a": "Wake-on-LAN cannot tell you; there is no acknowledgement in the protocol. With the free agent on the PC, the row turns green — **up now — agent connected** — the moment the machine is up, on every plan. On Plus and Pro, wake confirmation watches your own network for the machine answering and reports that it came up, or that it did not and the likely reason, pushed to your phone. The free plan keeps the last ten attempts, with the reason any failed." }, { "q": "How do I put it back to sleep from my phone?", "a": "Install the free [agent](/agent) on the PC and its row, on the dashboard and in the phone app, carries **Sleep**: press it and the machine suspends in seconds. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add **Restart…**, **Shut down…** and **Keep awake…**, which holds the machine up for a window you choose and lets it sleep by itself when the timer ends unless somebody is using it. A Claude chat can sleep it too." }, { "q": "Is there a free way to do all this?", "a": "Yes, and it is a plan rather than a trial. The free plan wakes one machine as often as you like — from the dashboard, the phone app, voice and a Claude chat — keeps its last ten attempts with the reason any failed, and includes ten sleeps a month through the free agent. Plus and Pro buy what sits around the wake: confirmation, schedules, unmetered sleep with restart and shutdown, keep-awake, more machines, and other people. [Compare the plans](/#pricing) for the whole list." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions people type before setting this up", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "Install the free agent", "href": "/agent" }, { "label": "Compare the plans", "href": "/#pricing" } ] }, "gaming": { "path": "/wake-gaming-pc-remotely", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-08-12", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 12 August 2026", "title": "How to wake your gaming PC remotely — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "How to wake your gaming PC remotely", "lead": [ "A gaming rig is the machine you least want idling and most want available. The arrangement is the one you would set up by hand if you had the evening: it sleeps at about three watts whenever nobody is on it, stays awake while a session or a download is genuinely running, and drops back to sleep after you stop. Getting it back is the step that depends on the hardware — Wake-on-LAN brings it up in a couple of seconds from wherever you are, on a wired rig, and this guide covers the Wi-Fi and Mac cases too.", "This guide is the whole setup, in order: the settings that make a PC wakeable at all, the four things that can send the wake from outside the house, how to have the streaming client open the moment the machine is genuinely up rather than a hopeful few seconds later, and how it goes back to sleep when you stop. It ends with what changes if the rig is a Mac or a laptop, and the seven reasons a wake does nothing." ], "sections": [ { "title": "Get the PC wakeable first — this is where it usually goes wrong", "body": [ "Nothing else on this page matters until the machine actually responds to a packet on your own network. Four settings account for almost every failure, and they are worth doing in this order because each can mask the next. With the free [agent](/agent) on the PC, the **Wake readiness** section in the machine's settings on the dashboard reads the fast-startup and adapter settings for you and offers to fix both — on a Linux rig, the adapter setting alone, there being no fast startup to turn off." ], "media": { "src": "/media/windows-wake-settings.9db9f8e5.svg", "width": 960, "height": 420, "alt": "Three panels naming the settings: Wake on LAN enabled and ErP Ready disabled in the BIOS; Allow this device to wake the computer, Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer and Wake on Magic Packet enabled on the Ethernet adapter; Turn on fast startup unticked in Power Options.", "caption": "The settings by their names — an illustration, not a screenshot, because the dialogs differ by board and driver." }, "ordered": true, "items": [ "**Use Ethernet if you possibly can.** Waking over Wi-Fi means WoWLAN, which depends on the adapter, the driver and how your router handles key rotation. We do not promise it. A cable turns a maybe into a yes, and on a gaming machine you probably wanted the cable anyway.", "**Turn off Windows fast startup.** It makes \"Shut down\" a partial hibernation, and in that state most network cards will not wake. It is on by default. *Control Panel, Power Options, Choose what the power buttons do, Change settings that are currently unavailable*, then untick **Turn on fast startup**.", "**Enable wake in the BIOS.** Boards call it **Wake on PCI-E**, **Power On By PCI-E/PCI**, **Resume by LAN** or **Wake on LAN**. While you are there, disable **ErP Ready** or **EuP 2013** if the option exists — it cuts standby power to the network card and quietly undoes everything else.", "**Tick the adapter checkbox.** In Device Manager, on the Ethernet adapter, *Power Management*, **Allow this device to wake the computer**. Some drivers also carry a separate *Wake on Magic Packet* setting under Advanced.", "**Take the right MAC address.** Run `getmac /v` and use the Physical Address of the **Ethernet** row — not a VirtualBox, VMware, Hyper-V, WSL or VPN adapter. Giving a wake service a virtual adapter's address is the single most common reason a correctly configured machine never wakes." ] }, { "title": "Then send the wake from outside the house", "body": [ "A magic packet is a local broadcast, so something on your own network has to put it there — routers will not carry one in from the internet, and forwarding a port to try is both unreliable and a genuinely bad idea. What works is a small emitter inside the network holding an outbound connection out to a service, so your phone talks to the service and the service talks down the connection your network already opened.", "Four things can do that job, and none of them is the gaming PC itself. An Echo you already own: our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has it broadcast the packet, by voice or a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), and by nothing else. The [free agent](/agent) on something you already leave on — a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a mini PC, a home server — which turns that box into the sender for every other machine in the house; it cannot wake the machine it runs on, so it is never the rig's own route. A [certified smart plug](/certified-power-switches), on the paid plans, for a rig set to start when power returns — and the only route for a machine that is fully off. And a dongle you build, a Raspberry Pi Pico W in a printed case on about half a watt, for the very common case where a gaming household has nothing else running overnight. Either way, nothing is installed on the gaming PC to wake it. The plain, any-machine version of the whole loop — every sender, the Mac and laptop cases, and the six reasons a wake fails — is [how to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely)." ], "media": { "src": "/media/wake-row.8a5654b8.png", "width": 949, "height": 236, "alt": "A machine row on the dashboard reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now', a power chip showing 0 W, the phrase to say to the voice assistant, and a green Wake button.", "caption": "A real row: this machine is off at its plug, so the green **Wake** is the plug's — a cold boot for the rig that is fully off, on the paid plans." }, "table": { "hint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column.", "columns": [ { "id": "cost", "label": "What it costs" }, { "id": "triggers", "label": "What can trigger it" }, { "id": "limit", "label": "The one limit" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "voice", "label": "[An Amazon Echo you already own](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT)", "detail": "Our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has the Echo broadcast the packet on your home network — from the sofa by voice, from the train in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT).", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", and a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from anywhere in the world.", "limit": "Voice and the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links on Pro, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below." } }, { "id": "agent", "label": "The free agent on a machine that already stays on", "detail": "A NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box, a mini PC — or a container on any of them. Never the rig itself: an agent cannot wake the machine it runs on.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, voice and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro.", "limit": "Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on." } }, { "id": "plug", "label": "A certified smart plug", "detail": "For a rig set to start when power is applied — most desktop boards can be, under a BIOS name like **Restore AC Power Loss** or **AC BACK** — and the one route for a machine that is fully off. [The certified models](/certified-power-switches).", "cells": { "cost": "About £10", "triggers": "Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans.", "limit": "The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume." } }, { "id": "dongle", "label": "A dongle you build", "detail": "A Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the household where nothing else stays on overnight. The [parts list](/dongle-kit) names them.", "cells": { "cost": "About £17 in parts", "triggers": "Everything the agent carries.", "limit": "A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case." } } ] } }, { "title": "Wake and connect in one motion", "body": [ "The annoying part of remote play is not the wake, it is the fifteen seconds afterwards where you do not know whether to start the client yet. {{brand.name}} closes that with a connect link stored against the machine: put your streaming or remote-desktop client's own link on the machine — `moonlight://`, `parsec://`, an `rdp://` address, `ssh://`, `vnc://`, or a plain URL — and the row carries a **Remote Desktop** button that opens it, whatever the link's scheme.", "Press it while the rig is asleep and the button does the whole motion: it sends the wake, watches for the machine to come up, and opens the link the moment it has. Two things make that work. The free [agent](/agent) on the gaming PC is what says it is up — the row turns green, **up now — agent connected**, usually within twenty seconds, on every plan — and without it the button gives up after two minutes, because the packet itself never reports back. And on Plus and Pro the button holds the machine awake for ten minutes while you sign in, so a rig woken and then left for a moment does not doze off before the client connects.", "Two boundaries. Storing the link is free on every plan, and the wake and the watch are too; what the free plan does not have is the confirmation probe on your own network, on Plus and Pro, which reports that the machine came up or that it did not and why. And the connection itself is not ours: the button launches whichever client the link names, so that client still has to be installed and able to reach the machine.", "One piece of grammar that catches people out: Microsoft's Remote Desktop apps refuse a bare `rdp://name`. They want the attribute form with the inner colons encoded — `rdp://full%20address=s%3A192.168.1.20%3A3389` — and on a home network you generally want the IP rather than the machine name." ], "media": { "src": "/media/up-now-row.d2bcc050.png", "width": 949, "height": 235, "alt": "A machine row reading 'up now — agent connected — held awake until 12:18', with Remote AI and Remote Desktop buttons and, below, the Sleep button beside the hold, restart and shutdown controls.", "caption": "After the wake, with the free agent on the rig: **up now — agent connected — held awake until 12:18**, the **Remote Desktop** button that opens the stored link, and the controls for the other direction." } }, { "title": "Putting it back to sleep when you are done", "body": [ "Waking is free physics; sleeping is software, because something on the machine has to ask the operating system to suspend. Install the [agent](/agent) on the gaming PC as well and its row carries **Sleep**: press it from your phone when you finish playing and the rig suspends in seconds. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add **Restart…** and **Shut down…** beside it — which is what makes the whole arrangement worth setting up, since a rig that wakes remotely but only sleeps when you walk over to it is a rig that stays on.", "**Keep awake…**, on Plus and Pro, is the other half: hold the rig up for a download or a long session, and the row shows the deadline. When the timer ends, or the remote session that was holding it ends, the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it — on Windows, macOS and Linux. A rig on a certified plug shuts down cleanly instead, because it comes back by cold boot rather than resume, and the switch stays on for the next **Wake** to cycle it.", "The agent on the gaming PC cannot wake the machine it runs on — asleep, it is asleep along with it — so it does not replace the emitter on your always-on box or the dongle. The two do different jobs: one puts the machine to sleep, the other wakes it back up." ] }, { "title": "If the rig is a Mac, or a laptop", "body": [ "A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off. Turn on **Wake for network access** — or let the free [agent](/agent) on the Mac do it: **Prepare for wake**, in the row's **Wake readiness** section — keep it on mains and on a cable, and every sender above brings it back from sleep as it would a PC. An Apple-silicon Mac mini or Mac Studio used as a streaming host starts when power is applied, so a certified plug on the paid plans is its route from off, with the same green **Wake**.", "A MacBook, or a gaming laptop on Wi-Fi, cannot be woken by packet at all. A laptop on a dock with a cable is a desktop for these purposes; off the dock, nothing on this page reaches it. The handheld or laptop you are streaming *to* is not the problem — it is awake in your hands. Only the host has to be wakeable." ] }, { "title": "When the wake does nothing", "body": [ "Nearly every \"it does not wake\" is one of these seven, each with a check you can run at the desk before you are back on the sofa with the handheld. Work down the list: the top ones are the most common, and each can mask the next." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**The adapter setting is off.** Check Device Manager, the Ethernet adapter: **Allow this device to wake the computer** ticked under *Power Management*, **Wake on Magic Packet** Enabled under *Advanced*. A driver update can silently reset both; with the free agent on the machine, the dashboard's **Wake readiness** section catches it and offers the fix.", "**Fast startup is on, and you shut down.** The machine is hibernated, not off, and the card is parked un-armed. Check *Choose what the power buttons do*: **Turn on fast startup** unticked. Or sleep the machine instead — sleep is the state the packet is best at.", "**The machine was off, not asleep.** From full power-off a PC listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed and the driver's after-shutdown wake is on; a Mac never listens. Check: sleep it, send the wake, and if that works the missing setting is the BIOS one.", "**It is on Wi-Fi.** Check whether the cable is in. Waking over Wi-Fi works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop.", "**Wrong network.** A broadcast does not cross a VLAN, a guest Wi-Fi, a client-isolated network or, on some mesh systems, a different node. Check that the sender and the machine share a segment — same switch, off the guest network.", "**A BIOS power setting.** ErP Ready, EuP 2013, deep sleep, or a mode that cuts the standby rail. Check the BIOS's power page with all of those off and Wake on LAN on — and take the right address: `getmac /v`, the **Ethernet** row, never a virtual adapter's.", "**A power plan hibernated it, or the rig is on Wi-Fi only.** A *Power saver* plan, or a *Hibernate after* timer on any plan, turns a sleeping PC into a hibernated one a few hours in, and hibernated it is parked the way fast startup parks it — the packet that woke it at eleven does nothing at two. Check *Power Options, Change plan settings, Change advanced power settings, Sleep, Hibernate after*: **Never**. And a rig on Wi-Fi only is the cable case above with no cable to run: a certified plug on the paid plans wakes it by cold boot, and when a keep-awake timer on the paid plans runs out it shuts down cleanly, switch on, rather than sleeping into a state nothing could wake it from." ] }, { "title": "What it costs to leave it on instead", "body": [ "A gaming desktop idling at the desktop with the monitors off is commonly 60 to 120 watts, and considerably more if background applications keep the graphics card from dropping to its low-power state. Asleep, it is two to five. Over a year the difference is several hundred kilowatt-hours — multiply by your own tariff, because that is the only figure that matters and nobody else knows it.", "The other half is not measured in money. A machine that sleeps between sessions is quieter, cooler, pulls less dust through its filters, and is not running its fans at 3 a.m. in a bedroom.", "If your machine is a different shape of problem — a work desktop you need from a hotel, a fleet to patch overnight, a server in a cupboard — [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan) maps the six common ones and points at the guide for each." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Can Moonlight or Parsec wake the PC for me?", "a": "A streaming client can only connect to a host that is already awake — the host software is not running on a sleeping machine. Some clients can send a magic packet themselves, but only from the same local network, which does not help when you are out. The wake has to come from something inside your network that stays awake; the client's job starts once the machine is up, which is exactly what the connect handoff above is for." }, { "q": "Can I wake my PC for Steam Link or Moonlight from anywhere?", "a": "Yes. The wake is sent from inside your own network and asked for from wherever you are: an Echo you own, through [the free skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), the free agent on a box that stays on, a certified plug or a dongle puts the packet on the wire, and you ask for it from the dashboard, the phone app, by voice or in a Claude chat, on any connection. Steam Link and Moonlight then connect as they always do, to a host that is up. Store the client's own link against the machine and the row's **Remote Desktop** button does wake, wait and open as one press — with the free agent on the rig to say it is up, and on Plus and Pro a ten-minute hold while the client connects." }, { "q": "Do I have to install anything on the gaming PC?", "a": "Not to wake it. That is done by the network card below the operating system, so the machine can be asleep with nothing of ours on it at all. You would install the [agent](/agent) on the gaming PC for the other direction — sleeping it from your phone, with ten sleeps a calendar month on the free plan and unmetered on Plus and Pro, where restart and shutdown join it — and for the one-press wake-and-connect above, which needs the agent to say the machine is up." }, { "q": "My PC is on Wi-Fi. Will this work?", "a": "Best effort, and we would rather say so here than in a support ticket. Waking over Wi-Fi means WoWLAN: support varies by adapter and driver, group-key rekeying interferes with it, and Modern Standby complicates it further. If you can run a cable to the machine, do — on a gaming PC it is usually the better connection anyway. Run the [compatibility check](/#checker) for the specific click-path on your setup." }, { "q": "Will my PC wake from a full shutdown?", "a": "Sometimes, and it is a different setting from waking it from sleep. Asleep, the network card is already powered by the standby rail and armed, so it works as soon as the adapter setting is right. Fully off, the motherboard has to keep feeding that rail while the system is down — that is what the BIOS Wake-on-LAN option controls, some drivers need a separate *Wake on LAN after shutdown* setting on top, and Windows fast startup has to be off or Shut down parks the card un-armed. If shutdown wake will not cooperate, sleep is a perfectly good target: a sleeping desktop is two to five watts. And for a rig that is genuinely off — a power cut, a shutdown you forgot — a certified smart plug on the paid plans brings it up by cold boot, provided the board is set to start when power returns." }, { "q": "How do I know it actually woke, before I start the client?", "a": "On the paid plans, a probe on your own network watches for the machine answering after the packet goes out, and the dashboard tells you it came up — or that it did not, with the likely reason. That is also what makes the Connect button appear at the right moment. The free plan tells you the packet was sent, which is all Wake-on-LAN itself can ever report: the protocol has no acknowledgement of any kind." }, { "q": "Which plan do I need for this?", "a": "The free plan wakes one machine as often as you like, keeps the last ten attempts with the reason any failed, and includes ten sleeps a calendar month through the agent — enough to prove the whole arrangement works. The Plus plan at £{{price.plus}} a year is where this guide's extras live: confirmation that the machine came up, the ten-minute hold behind the one-press wake-and-connect, keep-awake for a long session, and unmetered sleep with restart and shutdown beside it. The [plans page](/#pricing) is the complete list." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions gamers ask before setting this up", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "remoteWork": { "path": "/wake-work-pc-from-home", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-08-12", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 12 August 2026", "title": "How to wake your work PC from home — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "How to wake your work PC from home, and reach it safely", "lead": [ "The machine with your licences, your local files and your set-up environment is at the office — or at home, while you are not. Leaving it running so you can get at it later is the obvious answer, and it is also how most people end up with a Remote Desktop port open to the internet without ever deciding to. The shape that costs less and exposes less is the opposite one: the machine sleeps by default, stays awake for as long as your session lasts, and goes back to sleep ten minutes after you disconnect.", "This guide covers the safer shape: keep the machine asleep, wake it the moment you need it, and reach it over something that dials out rather than something that listens. It also covers the four things that can send the wake, the checks worth running before you are somewhere else with a laptop, the sign-in trap that catches people who unlock that machine with a PIN or a fingerprint, how the machine goes back to sleep when you disconnect, what changes if the office PC is a Mac, and the seven reasons a wake does nothing." ], "sections": [ { "title": "The arrangement most people end up with, and why it is the risky one", "body": [ "It happens in two steps that each look reasonable. First the machine gets left on, because a machine that is off cannot be reached. Then a port gets forwarded at the router so Remote Desktop can be reached from outside — for one evening, or because a guide said to.", "An exposed Remote Desktop port is the single most brute-forced service on the internet and a leading first foothold for ransomware. Automated tools try millions of username-and-password combinations against those prompts continuously, and the uncomfortable part is how invisible it is: nothing on the machine looks wrong. If you are not certain whether you have one open, [check it](/exposed-remote-desktop) — the free agent reports whether your machine's Remote Desktop port is answering from the public internet, on every plan including the free one." ] }, { "title": "The shape that is both safer and cheaper", "body": [ "Turn the arrangement inside out. The machine sleeps at two to five watts, exposing nothing at all — there is no port to find, because there is no machine listening. You wake it in a couple of seconds when you actually need it, from your phone or a browser, and reach it over a path that leaves your network by connecting out rather than by waiting for the internet to connect in: a mesh network that needs no open ports, or a remote-desktop tool that dials out to a broker.", "Waking the machine needs nothing installed on the work PC at all. Something else on that network holds an outbound connection and puts the broadcast on the wire when you ask — the [free agent](/agent) on any machine there that already stays on, or a dongle drawing about half a watt if nothing does. When you are finished, the machine goes back to sleep and there is nothing left listening. [How to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) is the plain walkthrough of that loop for any machine, senders and troubleshooting included." ] }, { "title": "Setting it up", "body": [ "Do this while you are still standing next to the machine. Every step below is checkable from the desk, and none of them is checkable from a hotel.", "The second step is the only choice you make. Four things can send the packet, in the order of what you may already own: an Echo you have — our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has it broadcast the packet, by voice or a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), and by nothing else; the [free agent](/agent) on something at the office that already stays on — a server, a NAS, a Home Assistant box, a colleague's desktop that never sleeps; a [certified smart plug](/certified-power-switches), on the paid plans, for a machine that starts when power returns and the only route for one that is fully off; and a dongle you build for the network where nothing stays on. [How to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) walks each one." ], "media": { "src": "/media/windows-wake-settings.9db9f8e5.svg", "width": 960, "height": 420, "alt": "Three panels naming the settings: Wake on LAN enabled and ErP Ready disabled in the BIOS; Allow this device to wake the computer, Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer and Wake on Magic Packet enabled on the Ethernet adapter; Turn on fast startup unticked in Power Options.", "caption": "Step 1 by its names — an illustration, not a screenshot, because the dialogs differ by board and driver." }, "table": { "hint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column.", "columns": [ { "id": "cost", "label": "What it costs" }, { "id": "triggers", "label": "What can trigger it" }, { "id": "limit", "label": "The one limit" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "voice", "label": "[An Amazon Echo you already own](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT)", "detail": "Our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has the Echo broadcast the packet on that network — an Echo at home reaches a home office; one on the office network reaches the office PC.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", and a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from anywhere in the world.", "limit": "Voice and the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links on Pro, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below." } }, { "id": "agent", "label": "The free agent on a machine that already stays on", "detail": "A server, a NAS, a Home Assistant box, a mini PC, a colleague's desktop that never sleeps — or a container on any of them. Never the work PC itself: an agent cannot wake the machine it runs on.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, voice and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro.", "limit": "Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on." } }, { "id": "plug", "label": "A certified smart plug", "detail": "For a machine that starts when power is applied — most desktop PCs can be set to, and Apple-silicon desktop Macs do — and the one route for a machine that is fully off, or whose BIOS is not yours to open. [The certified models](/certified-power-switches).", "cells": { "cost": "About £10", "triggers": "Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans.", "limit": "The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume." } }, { "id": "dongle", "label": "A dongle you build", "detail": "A Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the network with no always-on machine. The [parts list](/dongle-kit) names them.", "cells": { "cost": "About £17 in parts", "triggers": "Everything the agent carries.", "limit": "A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case." } } ] }, "ordered": true, "items": [ "**Make the machine wakeable.** Ethernet rather than Wi-Fi if you have the choice; **Turn on fast startup** unticked under *Choose what the power buttons do*; **Wake on PCI-E** (or your board's name for it) enabled in the BIOS; **Allow this device to wake the computer** ticked on the Ethernet adapter's *Power Management* tab and **Wake on Magic Packet** Enabled under *Advanced*. The illustration above names them, the [compatibility check](/#checker) produces the exact click-path for your operating system, and with the free [agent](/agent) on the PC the dashboard's **Wake readiness** section reads the adapter and fast-startup settings and offers to fix both — on a Linux PC, the adapter setting alone, there being no fast startup to turn off.", "**Put a sender on that network.** The table above is the choice: [enable the skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) on an Echo you own, install the [agent](/agent) on something there that never sleeps, put a certified plug on a machine that starts when power returns, or plug in a dongle. That is what will actually broadcast the packet or restore the power; the work PC itself needs nothing.", "**Add the machine and test the wake from your phone**, on mobile data rather than the office Wi-Fi, so you are testing the path you will really use.", "**Store the connect link** against the machine — your remote-desktop address, `ssh://`, `vnc://`, or your remote tool's own link — so the dashboard can hand you over instead of leaving you to find the address later.", "**Confirm you can actually sign in remotely**, which is the step everybody skips. Lock the machine, connect to it the way you plan to, and get all the way to the desktop. See the next section for the specific thing that goes wrong." ] }, { "title": "The sign-in trap: you may not know your own password", "body": [ "If you unlock that machine with a PIN, a fingerprint or your face, you have not typed its password in a long time — possibly not since you set it up. A remote-desktop session does not accept the PIN. It asks for the account password, because the convenience sign-in is bound to that physical device and does not travel.", "People discover this at the worst possible moment. It is worth deliberately signing out and back in with the password before you go anywhere, and resetting it from the desk if it turns out you do not know it. If the account is a Microsoft or work account rather than a local one, the password is the one for that account, not something set on the machine.", "{{brand.name}} surfaces this on the machine's own card when the [agent](/agent) is installed: what kind of account signs in there, whether a PIN or fingerprint is set up, and when that machine last accepted a remote sign-in — so the question gets answered while you can still do something about it." ] }, { "title": "Waking it before you need it, and knowing that it worked", "body": [ "Two things turn this from a trick into something you rely on. A scheduled wake brings the machine up before you sit down — at eight every weekday, say — and can equally put it back to sleep at seven, so the machine is available exactly when you work and off the rest of the time. Schedules live on the paid plans, they retry, and every firing lands in your history.", "And confirmation answers the question the protocol cannot. After the packet goes out, a probe on that network watches for the machine answering, and you are told it came up or that it did not and why — on the paid plans, pushed to your phone rather than left in a browser tab. On the free plan you are told the packet was sent, which is genuinely all Wake-on-LAN reports by itself — though with the free [agent](/agent) on the machine the row turns green the moment it is up, **up now — agent connected**, on every plan.", "When you are done, the other direction takes care of itself. With the agent on the work PC, the row reads **in use — Remote Desktop** — or names whichever tool is connected — and the machine will not sleep while that session lasts. Ten minutes after you disconnect, long enough to pick up a dropped connection, or when a **Keep awake…** timer on Plus and Pro runs out, the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it — on Windows, macOS and Linux. A machine on a certified plug shuts down cleanly instead and the switch stays on, so the next **Wake** boots it again. Either way, nothing is left listening." ], "media": { "src": "/media/up-now-row.d2bcc050.png", "width": 949, "height": 235, "alt": "A machine row reading 'up now — agent connected — held awake until 12:18', with Remote AI and Remote Desktop buttons and, below, the Sleep button beside the hold, restart and shutdown controls.", "caption": "The row after a wake, with the free agent on the machine: **up now — agent connected**, the **Remote Desktop** button that opens the stored link, and the power controls beneath it." } }, { "title": "When the wake does nothing", "body": [ "Nearly every \"it does not wake\" is one of these seven, each with a check you can run at the desk — which is the point of doing them before you leave. Work down the list: the top ones are the most common, and each can mask the next." ], "media": { "src": "/media/plug-off-row.fd220635.png", "width": 949, "height": 507, "alt": "A machine row reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now' with its power popover open: 'feed on, drawing nothing — the machine is off, or unplugged from the switch as of 5 d ago', 'hard recovery verified', the label WALL POWER, and a green Wake button below.", "caption": "A plug-powered machine, off at the switch: the switch stays on, and the row's **Wake** boots it from cold — the route when the packet is not yours to arm, on the paid plans." }, "ordered": true, "items": [ "**The adapter setting is off.** Check Device Manager, the Ethernet adapter: **Allow this device to wake the computer** ticked under *Power Management*, **Wake on Magic Packet** Enabled under *Advanced*. A driver update can silently reset both; with the free agent on the machine, the dashboard's **Wake readiness** section catches it and offers the fix.", "**Fast startup is on, and you shut down.** The machine is hibernated, not off, and the card is parked un-armed. Check *Choose what the power buttons do*: **Turn on fast startup** unticked. Or sleep the machine instead — sleep is the state the packet is best at.", "**The machine was off, not asleep.** From full power-off a PC listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed and the driver's after-shutdown wake is on; a Mac never listens. Check: sleep it, send the wake, and if that works the missing setting is the BIOS one.", "**It is on Wi-Fi.** Check whether the cable is in. Waking over Wi-Fi works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop.", "**Wrong network.** A broadcast does not cross a VLAN, a guest Wi-Fi, a client-isolated network or, on some mesh systems, a different node. Check that the sender and the machine share a segment — same switch, off the guest network.", "**A BIOS power setting.** ErP Ready, EuP 2013, deep sleep, or a mode that cuts the standby rail. Check the BIOS's power page with all of those off and Wake on LAN on — and take the right address: `getmac /v`, the **Ethernet** row, never a virtual adapter's.", "**A domain policy, or a BIOS you cannot open.** On a managed machine you may have no admin rights in Device Manager, a policy may put the adapter's wake setting back at every sign-in, and the BIOS may be behind a password that is not yours. Check with whoever manages it whether Wake-on-LAN is allowed before you spend an evening on it. A rule against installing software is not a block — nothing is installed on the PC to wake it, and the free [agent](/agent) goes on an always-on office machine instead. A disarmed adapter or a locked BIOS is, because no packet from anywhere gets past it; the route round it is a certified plug on the paid plans, for a machine that starts when power returns, which boots it from cold and never needs the packet." ] }, { "title": "If the office PC is a Mac", "body": [ "A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off. Turn on **Wake for network access**, leave it on mains and on a cable, and every sender above brings it back from sleep as it would a PC; the free [agent](/agent) runs on it too, from its installer package, so the row reads the sleep when it happens, offers **Wake**, and offers to turn that setting on for you — **Prepare for wake**, in the row's **Wake readiness** section. An Apple-silicon Mac mini or Mac Studio starts when power is applied, so a certified plug on the paid plans is its route from off.", "A MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all. Docked, on a cable and on mains, it is a desktop for these purposes; shut in a drawer, nothing on this page reaches it, and the answer is to leave it on the dock, asleep. Reaching a Mac once it is up keeps the same rule as a PC — Screen Sharing or a remote-desktop tool that dials out, never a port opened at the office router.", "If your situation is a different shape — a gaming rig you stream from, a floor of machines to patch, a NAS you want spun down between jobs — [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan) maps the six common ones and points at the guide for each." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Is Remote Desktop safe to use over the internet?", "a": "Not exposed directly — an open Remote Desktop port is the most attacked service there is. It is perfectly safe reached over something that does not require an open port: a mesh or VPN network where your laptop and the machine join the same private network, or a remote-desktop product whose host dials out to a broker rather than listening for the internet. Either way, the machine can stay asleep until you wake it, which removes the exposure entirely for most of the week." }, { "q": "How do I find out whether my Remote Desktop port is open right now?", "a": "Install the free [agent](/agent) on the machine and its card tells you: it reports whether that machine's own Remote Desktop port is answering from the public internet, names the port, and says how to close it. This runs on every plan, free included — knowing your own front door is unlocked is not something to put behind a price. The check only ever looks at the machine's own address, never at anything else on your network." }, { "q": "Does my home or office IP address changing break this?", "a": "No. Nothing ever connects *to* the network — the emitter inside it holds an outbound connection and re-establishes it after any reconnect. You do not need dynamic DNS, a static IP or a VPN just to wake the machine." }, { "q": "Can I wake my work PC without opening a port on the office router?", "a": "Yes, and that is the whole design. A magic packet is a broadcast on the office network, so it has to be sent from inside: [an Echo](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), an agent, a plug or a dongle on that network holds a connection out to the service, and the packet leaves from inside when you ask. Nothing is forwarded, the office's public address can change, and there is no port for the internet to find — [Wake-on-LAN without port forwarding](/wake-on-lan-without-port-forwarding) covers the mechanics. Reaching the machine afterwards keeps the same rule: a mesh network or a tool that dials out, never Remote Desktop exposed at the router." }, { "q": "Do I need to install anything on the work PC?", "a": "Not to wake it — that happens in the network card, below the operating system. You would install the [agent](/agent) there for three things: the connection facts described above (free on every plan); sleeping the machine from your phone — the free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month, and Plus and Pro are unmetered, with restart and shutdown beside it; and the row that says **up now — agent connected** the moment it is up. If the machine is managed by an IT department, installing anything on it is their call, and asking is faster than finding out afterwards." }, { "q": "What if the machine does not wake while I am away?", "a": "On the paid plans you find out rather than discovering it by failing to connect: the confirmation probe reports that it did not come up and the likely reason, and alerts cover the times nobody pressed anything — a scheduled wake that did not land, or an emitter that stopped reporting days before you needed it. The usual causes are the seven under **When the wake does nothing** above, which is why they are worth working through from the desk." }, { "q": "What if the office PC is a Mac?", "a": "From sleep, over Ethernet, with **Wake for network access** on and the Mac on mains, every sender on this page wakes it exactly as it would a PC; the free [agent](/agent) runs on it too, from its installer package, so the row reads the sleep and offers **Wake**. A Mac never wakes by packet from full power-off, and a MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all — docked on a cable it is a desktop for these purposes. An Apple-silicon Mac mini or Mac Studio starts when power is applied, so a certified plug on the paid plans boots it from off." }, { "q": "Can I use this for more than one machine?", "a": "The free plan covers one. Plus covers five machines and up to five people at £{{price.plus}} a year, which is the household or small-team shape; Pro covers twenty machines and twenty-five people at £{{price.pro}} a year and adds the fleet features. If several people need the same machines, [the team guide](/wake-on-lan-for-teams) covers sharing properly rather than by passing a password around." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions about reaching a work machine", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "teams": { "path": "/wake-on-lan-for-teams", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-08-12", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 12 August 2026", "title": "Wake-on-LAN for a team — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Wake-on-LAN for a team: shared machines, separate sign-ins", "lead": [ "Machines that sleep when nobody is on them, stay awake while somebody is working on them, and go back to sleep afterwards is a solved problem for one person and one machine. It gets interesting the moment a second person needs to wake one — because the usual answer is to share a login, and a shared login is a credential nobody can revoke, on an account where everything anyone does looks identical.", "This guide covers doing it properly: inviting people with their own sign-ins, giving them different rights, limiting somebody to particular machines, handing a wake button to someone with no account at all, and being able to see afterwards who did what." ], "sections": [ { "title": "Why the shared login always ends badly", "body": [ "It is not that sharing a password is theoretically insecure. It is that it removes the two things you need when something goes wrong. You cannot revoke one person's access, because there is only one credential and everybody has it — so when somebody leaves, the choice is changing the password for everyone or doing nothing, and in practice it is nothing. And you cannot tell who did what, because every action was taken by the same account.", "The alternative is not more complicated to run. Each person is invited by email, signs in as themselves, and can be removed in one click. Everything they do lands in the account's history under their own name, which is what turns \"who shut the design machine down at 4 p.m.\" from an argument into a lookup." ] }, { "title": "The role ladder", "body": [ "Four roles, each including everything below it. The ladder is deliberately short — a permission system nobody can hold in their head gets set to the top rung for everyone, which is the shared login again with extra steps." ], "items": [ "**Wake** — wake the machines they have been given, and see what happened. The safe default, and the only rung that can be limited to specific machines.", "**Wake and power off** — wake them, and also sleep, restart or shut them down. A separate rung on purpose: shutting a machine down can strand it in a way switching one on never can, so it is granted rather than assumed.", "**Manage machines** — everything above, plus editing the account's machine list.", "**Admin** — everything above, plus the dongles and inviting other people. Not billing, which stays with the account owner." ] }, { "title": "Sharing one machine, not the whole account", "body": [ "A grant does not have to cover everything. At the Wake rung it can be scoped to particular machines, which is what most real arrangements need: the person who opens the shop gets the till PC and nothing else, the contractor gets the render box for the length of the job, the neighbour feeding the cat gets the media server.", "The people themselves are a plan feature and the numbers are the ladder: the Plus plan at £{{price.plus}} a year covers five machines and five people, which is a household or a very small office; the Pro plan at £{{price.pro}} a year covers twenty machines and twenty-five people, and adds the fleet features below. The free plan is one machine and one person — it is the right place to prove the wake works before anybody else is involved." ] }, { "title": "Somebody with no account at all", "body": [ "Sometimes the person who needs to wake a machine should not have a login on your account at all — a cleaner, a weekend duty manager, a client. On the Pro plan a wake link handles that: a URL that wakes exactly one machine and does nothing else. They tap it, the machine starts, and they never see your dashboard, your other machines or your account.", "The URL is the credential, so treat it as one. It is revocable from the machine's page and stops working immediately when the arrangement ends, and every use lands in your history under the label you gave the link. Power actions are deliberately unreachable this way: a URL that could shut a machine down is not a wake button." ] }, { "title": "Grouping machines by where they live", "body": [ "Once there are more than a handful of machines, the useful axis is usually location rather than name. On the Pro plan machines can carry a site label — Office, Workshop, Front desk — and the dashboard groups them by it, so waking everything at one site is one action rather than eleven. That same grouping is what makes a maintenance window practical; [the patching guide](/wake-on-lan-for-patching) covers that side.", "Batch actions go through exactly the same per-machine checks as pressing the buttons individually, one at a time, so a person with a scoped grant does not gain anything by using the group control." ] }, { "title": "Accounts, and locking them down", "body": [ "Sign-in is a magic link by default — there is no password on the account to leak, be reused, or be written on a note by the monitor. Anyone who wants a second factor can add a TOTP code from an ordinary authenticator app, and that is available on every plan including the free one: security is not something to put behind a price. Recovery codes come with it, because a lost phone should not be a lost account.", "When somebody leaves, removing them is immediate and does not disturb anybody else. That is the difference the whole arrangement buys, and it is worth setting up before you need it rather than during the week you do.", "If sharing is only part of what you need — an overnight patch window, a machine to reach while travelling, a homelab to spin down — [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan) maps the six common ones and points at the guide for each." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Can I let someone wake one machine without seeing the others?", "a": "Yes. A grant at the Wake rung can be scoped to specific machines, so the person sees and can act on exactly those. If they should not have an account at all, a wake link on the Pro plan gives them a URL that wakes one machine and shows them nothing else." }, { "q": "Do the people I invite need their own subscription?", "a": "No. They are invited to your account and covered by your plan — five people on Plus, twenty-five on Pro. They sign in as themselves with their own email, which is the point, but there is nothing for them to buy." }, { "q": "Can I stop someone shutting machines down?", "a": "That is the default. Powering a machine off is its own rung of the ladder, above waking: give somebody the Wake role and they can switch machines on and see what happened, and nothing else. It is separated deliberately, because a shutdown can leave a machine stranded somewhere nobody is, and a wake cannot." }, { "q": "What happens when someone leaves?", "a": "Remove them and their access ends immediately — no password change, nothing to tell anybody else. What they did stays in the account's history under their name, which is usually the reason you wanted separate sign-ins in the first place. If they had been given one of Pro's wake links rather than an account, revoke the link from the machine's page and the URL stops working." }, { "q": "Can we see who woke what?", "a": "Yes — every wake, power action and schedule firing is recorded against the person or link that caused it, and the account has a history page covering all of it. How far back it goes is the plan: thirty days on Plus, twelve months on Pro. On Pro the whole history can also be exported as a CSV file through the API, for whatever ingests that sort of thing where you work." }, { "q": "Is two-factor authentication available?", "a": "Yes, on every plan including free — a TOTP code from any standard authenticator app, with recovery codes. It is marketed on the Pro card because that is where the people running a checklist look, but the capability is not gated: nobody should have to upgrade to protect their account." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions about sharing machines with people", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "patching": { "path": "/wake-on-lan-for-patching", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-08-12", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 12 August 2026", "title": "Wake-on-LAN for patch windows and remote reboots — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Wake a fleet for a patch window, and reboot it afterwards", "lead": [ "The point of a fleet that sleeps overnight is that it costs nothing overnight. The price of it is that updates land on machines that are switched off, which leaves the two bad options everybody knows: patch during the working day and interrupt people, or send somebody round the floor pressing power buttons at seven in the morning.", "Waking a fleet on a schedule, letting the updates run, restarting the machines and putting them back to sleep is the oldest legitimate use of Wake-on-LAN there is. This guide covers doing it so that it survives contact with reality — machines that do not come up, more than one subnet, and somebody eventually asking for evidence that it happened." ], "sections": [ { "title": "The window, end to end", "body": [ "The shape of a maintenance window is the same everywhere. Wake the machines shortly before the window opens; let whatever manages your updates do its work; restart the ones that need it; put them back to sleep before the working day starts. Each of those four is a scheduled action rather than a person, or it will not happen reliably.", "In {{brand.name}} the schedules live server-side rather than on somebody's laptop, they retry, and every firing lands in the account's history whether it succeeded or not. Both directions are covered by one mechanism: a schedule can wake a machine at 02:00 and another can sleep it at 05:30. Schedules are on the paid plans — ten of them on Plus, unlimited on Pro." ] }, { "title": "Restarting after the updates land", "body": [ "Waking is done by the network card and needs nothing installed. Restarting is the opposite: something on the machine has to ask the operating system to do it, which is what the [agent](/agent) is for. Install it and, on the Plus and Pro plans, you can restart, sleep or shut down that machine from the dashboard, the API or a schedule.", "One piece of physics to design around: an agent cannot wake the machine it runs on, because a sleeping machine is not running anything. So the emitter that starts the fleet has to be something that stays awake — an agent on a server or a management box that never sleeps, or a dongle. The agent on each workstation is for the return trip." ] }, { "title": "More than one subnet", "body": [ "A magic packet is a broadcast and does not cross a router. If your machines sit on several VLANs or in several buildings, you need something awake on each segment — that is a property of the protocol, not a limitation of any product, and anybody claiming otherwise is describing a directed-broadcast configuration on your own routers rather than something they do.", "The Pro plan covers five emitters, which is five segments, and machines are counted account-wide rather than per emitter — twenty of them included — so which emitter carries which machine is a topology detail rather than a pricing one. Additional emitters and machines can be added to a Pro plan as slots if the shape of your network needs it." ] }, { "title": "Doing a whole site at once", "body": [ "On the Pro plan machines carry a site label — Ground floor, Warehouse, Branch two — and the dashboard groups them by it, so a maintenance window is one action per site rather than one per machine. The batch controls run the same per-machine checks as pressing each button individually, one at a time, so nothing is bypassed by using them.", "For anything that has to be driven from your own tooling instead, the REST API does everything the dashboard does. API keys are on the paid plans: five on Plus, unlimited on Pro. A key can be scoped so that the credential in your automation is allowed to wake machines and nothing else." ] }, { "title": "Knowing it worked, and proving it later", "body": [ "Wake-on-LAN has no acknowledgement, so a fleet wake with nothing watching it is a fleet wake you find out about from a user. Confirmation probes each machine after the packet goes out and records whether it came up, with the likely reason when it did not; failure alerts cover the case nobody was watching, which for a 02:00 window is every case — a scheduled wake that did not land, or an emitter that stopped reporting days before the window. Both are on the paid plans.", "For a webhook into your own monitoring, the Pro plan carries up to twenty-five, so a failed wake can raise a ticket where your team actually looks. History retention is thirty days on Plus and twelve months on Pro, and the Pro plan can export the whole event history as a CSV file through the API — a stable, paged format for whatever ingests it, rather than a screenshot of a dashboard." ] }, { "title": "Getting the agent onto twenty machines", "body": [ "Installing the agent interactively works fine on one machine and does not scale to a floor of them, because the interactive install asks the person at the desk to confirm the account. The Pro plan's answer is an enrolment token: one reusable, revocable credential that binds every machine you install the agent on, with nobody signing in at each desk.", "On Windows that makes the install a single silent line you can send through whatever you already use to distribute software — the Windows installer accepts `ENROLTOKEN` as a property and runs with `/qn` — and each machine appears on the dashboard as it enrols. Revoking the token stops it being usable for future installs without disturbing the machines already enrolled.", "If the fleet is not the whole picture — one desktop to reach from home, a shared machine several people wake, a lab of your own — [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan) maps the six common ones and points at the guide for each." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Can I wake machines on more than one network segment?", "a": "Yes, with something awake on each. A magic packet is a broadcast and routers do not forward broadcasts, so each VLAN or site needs its own emitter — the [agent](/agent) on a machine that stays on there, or a dongle. The Pro plan includes five, and more can be added as slots." }, { "q": "What happens if a machine does not come up?", "a": "On the paid plans you are told, rather than finding out from whoever sits at it. The confirmation probe reports that it did not come up and the likely reason, the attempt is recorded in the history, and failure alerts raise it even though nobody was watching at 02:00. On Pro a webhook can put it straight into your own monitoring." }, { "q": "Can this drive my own scripts or management tooling?", "a": "Yes — the REST API does everything the dashboard does, including wakes, power actions and reading the history. API keys are on the paid plans: five on Plus, unlimited on Pro. Keys can be scoped, so an automation credential can be allowed to wake machines without being allowed to power them off." }, { "q": "How long is the history kept, and can I export it?", "a": "Thirty days on Plus and twelve months on Pro, and rows past the policy are actually deleted rather than hidden. On Pro the full event history can be exported as CSV through the API — a documented, paged file format meant for a pipeline rather than for reading on screen." }, { "q": "Does the agent need administrator rights?", "a": "To install as a service, yes — it registers a system service so it keeps running with nobody logged in, which is exactly what you want for a maintenance window. That is one administrator approval per machine on the interactive install, or none at all if you are deploying it silently with one of Pro's enrolment tokens through your existing software distribution." }, { "q": "Can I put the machines back to sleep afterwards?", "a": "Yes, and it is the half that makes the window worth automating — a schedule can sleep or shut a machine down as easily as wake it. It needs the agent installed on the machine, because turning a computer off means asking its operating system to do it, and it is on the Plus and Pro plans. Waking never needs the agent." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions about running this across a fleet", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "homelab": { "path": "/wake-on-lan-homelab-nas", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-08-12", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 12 August 2026", "title": "Wake-on-LAN for a homelab or NAS — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Wake-on-LAN for a homelab: use the box that never sleeps", "lead": [ "The expensive machine in a homelab does not need to be on all day; it needs to be on while a job is running. Sleeping it between jobs, having it hold itself up while a backup or a build is actually moving, and getting it back in seconds is the whole arrangement — and if you have a Raspberry Pi, a NAS or a small server running in a cupboard, you already own the part everybody else has to buy. Waking a machine over the internet needs exactly one thing inside your network: something that is awake and can put a broadcast on the wire. You have that.", "This guide covers using it — the free agent as an emitter, which box to put it on, the arithmetic about when a dedicated device is still the better answer, spinning the power-hungry machine down between jobs, and self-hosting the whole service if you would rather not depend on us at all." ], "sections": [ { "title": "The always-on box is the emitter", "body": [ "The [agent](/agent) is a single static binary with no dependencies, and it is free to download and free to use as an emitter — permanently, on any plan, including the free one. Install it on the machine that already never sleeps and that machine becomes the thing that takes the wake request and broadcasts the magic packet on your network. There is no hardware to buy and nothing plugged in.", "It is built for Linux on amd64, arm64 and the older ARMv6 cores in the original Pi and the Pi Zero, as well as Windows and Apple silicon — so a Pi of any generation, a mini PC, a home server, a Docker host, or a NAS that lets you run your own binary or a container. On Linux it installs itself as a systemd service, so it comes back after a reboot without you thinking about it. On a NAS the container is the route — one docker line, host-networked, and it enrols itself as your always-on waker; [the NAS page](/nas) walks through Synology, QNAP, Unraid and TrueNAS." ] }, { "title": "When a dedicated dongle still beats it", "body": [ "This is the trade, stated plainly, because it is the question the homelab reader actually has. A Raspberry Pi 4 idles at roughly three watts and is a general-purpose computer that wants updating, a working SD card and a power supply that has not started to sag. The dongle — a Pi Pico W in a printed case — holds its connection on about half a watt and does one job.", "So: if a box is running anyway, use the agent. The marginal cost of the emitter job on a machine that is already on is zero, and buying hardware for it would be silly. The dongle is for the case where nothing stays on — the household that genuinely wants no computer left running, or a second network segment with no always-on machine on it. You can also mix them: an agent here, a dongle in the room with no server." ] }, { "title": "Spinning the big machine down between jobs", "body": [ "The usual homelab shape is a small always-on box plus something much larger that is only occasionally needed — a NAS full of spinning disks, a machine with a GPU in it, a bulk-storage server. The valuable arrangement is: the small box stays up and does the waking; the big machine sleeps most of the time and is woken for the job.", "The return trip needs software on the big machine, because putting a computer to sleep means asking its operating system to do it. Install the [agent](/agent) there as well and, on the Plus and Pro plans, you can sleep, restart or shut it down from the dashboard, the API, or a schedule — wake at 01:00 for the backup window, sleep again at 03:00. What no software can do is have that agent wake its own machine: asleep, it is asleep too, which is why the small box is doing that job." ] }, { "title": "What the free plan actually covers here", "body": [ "One machine, unlimited wakes, the dashboard, and the last ten attempts on record with the reason any of them failed. For a homelab with one big box to wake, that is a complete answer and it does not expire — there is no card, no trial clock and no feature that switches off.", "What the paid plans add is the part around the wake: confirmation that the machine came up rather than just that a packet went out, schedules, the power actions above, API keys for your own scripts, and more machines. Plus is £{{price.plus}} a year for five machines and five people; Pro is £{{price.pro}} a year for twenty machines, five emitters and the fleet features. The [plans page](/#pricing) is the complete list." ] }, { "title": "Home Assistant", "body": [ "There is a native Home Assistant integration, so machines appear as switches and buttons in your dashboards and automations rather than as a shell command wrapped in YAML. Install it through HACS as a custom repository — it is public and installable today, but the default HACS listing is somebody else's review queue and it is not in it yet.", "The power buttons in Home Assistant follow the same rules as everywhere else: they reach a machine the agent is installed on, through an API key allowed to power things, on a paid plan. Waking works with any key.", "The same repository also ships an **add-on** that runs the free agent on the Home Assistant box itself, as your always-on waker — free on every plan, and nothing to do with API keys. [The NAS page](/nas) has the four steps." ] }, { "title": "Running the whole thing yourself", "body": [ "The firmware is open, the wire protocol is published in full, and the reference relay is in the repository under AGPL-3.0. Standing it up is `git clone` and `docker compose up -d`, and the setup page will point a dongle at your own relay instead of ours. That is a real option rather than a reassuring sentence — the protocol is published precisely so that it is.", "If you build the hardware from the repository and self-host the relay, you never touch us and it costs nothing. The subscription buys hosted infrastructure — machines, confirmation, schedules, power actions, people, webhooks, support — and never unlocks a capability in the firmware. Everything is at [the repository]({{brand.repo}}).", "If your lab is only half of it — a work machine to reach remotely, a rig to stream from, other people who need to wake things — [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan) maps the six common ones and points at the guide for each." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Agent or dongle — which should I use?", "a": "If you already have a machine that never sleeps, the agent, every time: it is free, there is nothing to buy, and the emitter job costs a box that is already running essentially nothing. The dongle earns its place when nothing stays on, or on a network segment with no always-on machine, because it does the same job at roughly half a watt against a Pi's three." }, { "q": "Can the agent wake the machine it is installed on?", "a": "No, and nothing could — an agent on a sleeping machine is asleep along with it, because software does not run on a machine that is powered down. That is the entire reason Wake-on-LAN is a network protocol rather than a program. The first packet always comes from something else that is awake. What the agent on that machine *can* do, on the paid plans, is put it to sleep, ready for something else to wake it." }, { "q": "Will it run on my NAS?", "a": "If the NAS runs Linux on amd64 or arm64 — which most do — and lets you run your own binary or a container, yes. The agent is a single static file with no dependencies and no runtime to install. If your NAS is locked down to its vendor's app store, a Raspberry Pi on the same network does the job for a few pounds of electricity a year. The container image is the easy route — [the NAS page](/nas) has the docker line and the Container Manager, Container Station, Unraid and TrueNAS steps." }, { "q": "Do I have to use your relay?", "a": "No. The reference relay is in the repository under AGPL-3.0, it implements the full published protocol, and pointing a dongle at your own is a field on the setup page. That is the escape hatch, and it is real: if we vanished tomorrow, the hardware and the firmware keep working against a relay you run." }, { "q": "Does the agent phone home with anything about my network?", "a": "It holds an outbound connection to the relay and reports what its own machine is: whether it is up, and — for the connection facts on its card — things about that machine such as whether its Remote Desktop port is answering from outside. It never scans anything else on your network; the exposure check is built so that it can only ever look at the machine's own address. The [agent page](/agent) and the source in [the repository]({{brand.repo}}) are the full account." }, { "q": "Can I script it?", "a": "Yes — the REST API covers wakes, power actions and reading the history, and it is what the dashboard itself uses. API keys are on the paid plans: five on Plus, unlimited on Pro. Keys can be scoped, so a script that only needs to wake things does not carry a credential that could shut them down." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions from people who already run a server", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "The free agent", "href": "/agent" } ] }, "remoteAi": { "$note": "The Remote AI developer guide (T4 of the Remote AI train, 2026-08-30) — the GEO page for the 'run Claude Code remotely' intent, and the real onboarding document for the feature. Extra rules on top of guides.$note, each with a reason. TRADEMARK: Claude Code and Anthropic are named as the tool being used — 'works with Claude Code' compatibility phrasing throughout, never implied endorsement; the same care applies to any remote-desktop product, which is why none is named and 'remote desktop' stays generic. NO HARDWARE SELLING: the shop is not open, so the dongle is described as existing for the household with nothing always-on and is never linked to a purchase; the free agent on any always-on box is the recommended emitter. ORACLES, pinned by guides-copy.test.mjs: the free session allowance is TIERS.free.remoteSessions (ten a calendar month, starts not hours — a start is the only event the ledger can count), unmetered rides Plus (remoteSessions null), and the Claude Code version gate is the one shared/session.js refuses below — the guide must quote the same number, because a support page teaching last year's floor strands the reader at the real one. KEEP-AWAKE ATTRIBUTION: the hold inside a session rides with the session on every plan (D6), while standalone keep-awake and the power actions are paid — every sentence keeps that split. SESSION PRIVACY: the session runs as the machine's own user with the user's own Claude sign-in; we start and stop the process and never see, store or proxy Anthropic credentials — the security FAQ states it because it is the first thing a developer checks. The gotchas section is deliberately the longest part: the local-network permission prompt, the lagging claude.ai session list, the private-repo GitHub grant and the wake-from-shutdown discipline are all live-proven findings nobody else documents, which is this page's entire claim to being cited. THE CONNECTOR (added 2026-08-30, the day it went live): the claude.ai connector section names Customize as where Connectors lives and says gently that older instructions say Settings, because the screen moved and a stale direction strands the reader in the wrong menu; the endpoint is {{brand.mcp}}/mcp so a rename regenerates the guide rather than stranding it (brand.mcp joined gen-brand's PUBLIC_KEYS for exactly this sentence); the tool count, the sleep-asks-first rule and the no-shutdown fact are pinned to mcp/src/tools.js by guides-copy.test.mjs; and the connector directory listing (LIVE 2026-09-01: claude.ai/directory/rooster-wake, approved same day as a community connector) is the guide's primary install path — guides-copy.test.mjs pins the link's presence now, the exact inversion of the pin that forbade it while the listing was unsubmitted. RETOLD 2026-09-02 (connector onboarding, phase 6 — thirteen directory arrivals connected, ten installed nothing, and the three who did put the agent on the machine they wanted to wake, where it sleeps with its host): the guide now opens with the in-Claude setup as TRANSCRIPT BLOCKS. A body entry that is an object { you, claude: [string | { code }] } is one exchange, rendered by site/tools/prose.mjs chatHtml and js/landing.js chat in parity, with the speaker labels on the section's `speakers` so no user-visible string lives in a renderer or a stylesheet. Every Claude line is the tool's own text from mcp/src/tools.js — the empty-inventory answer, the unwakeable row line, the saved-workspace and session-running lines — and guides-copy.test.mjs pins each to its source, because a transcript that drifts from what Claude actually answers is worse than no transcript; the install lines are shared/email-templates.js onboardingInstallCommands with you@example.com as the placeholder address (hostnames stay tokens, so the paste resolves to the live apex), and the example MAC is an RFC 7042 documentation address. ALEXA — an exception to guides.$note rule (2), recorded here: the skill was certified and published (a one-way fact, not a flag a deploy could flip back), the connector's own machine list and the welcome email both name it, so the sleeping-PC section names it as the cheapest of the three wake routes — but only in a string that also carries the store URL, the licensed-in-halves arrangement the Home Assistant card has, and guides-copy.test.mjs holds every guide to that pairing. The sleeping-PC section exists because nothing on the old page said out loud that the agent on the target is asleep when the target is. RETOLD 2026-09-05 FOR THE SEARCH INTENT: the searches this page can win are 'keep computer awake claude code', 'keep mac awake claude code', 'claude code remote control sleep' and 'keep claude code running when laptop sleeps' — page one for them is caffeinate wrappers, tray apps and blog posts, none of which can wake a machine that has already slept — so the title, the lead and two sections placed BEFORE the walkthrough now carry the awake/sleep intent in the searcher's own words, and the five FAQ questions at the top of the list are those searches as questions, pinned in order. FACTS those sections state, each with its source: the hold while a `claude remote-control` process runs (on all three OSes, whether the session was started at the keyboard or from the dashboard) and the chip text **in use — Claude Code** (app/public/js/in-use-facts.js SESSION_KIND_NAMES, pinned); the ten-minute grace after the process ends (in-use-facts.js GRACE_ON_END_SINCE, pinned); the meter's-end sentence in the wake-any-PC guide's words, pinned equal between the two guides, with the three verdicts shared/meter-end.js derives — sleep on a cable, a clean shutdown on a plug with the switch left on, nothing for a Wi-Fi-only machine with no plug because nothing could wake it again; the macOS package helper that lets the Mac say goodbye before it sleeps (the agent page's own sentence); session START still on the Windows agent alone (the agent's `session` capability); and the one blind spot, stated as a trap — remote control switched on from inside a `claude` already running is invisible to the process scan, so the guide says to start it as `claude remote-control`. `caffeinate` is named as the OS command people search for, never as a product, and no keep-awake app is named. The title tag is the heading, as the wake-any-PC guide's is, and the static description is at most 160 characters — the snippet length — and names the two searches.", "path": "/run-claude-code-remotely", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-08-30", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 30 August 2026", "title": "Run Claude Code remotely on a PC that sleeps, and keep it awake only while it works — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Run Claude Code remotely on a PC that sleeps, and keep it awake only while it works", "lead": [ "Claude Code’s Remote Control hands a live coding session to your phone or any browser — but the session runs on a real machine, and that machine has to be awake for as long as the session does and no longer. So the questions people actually type are the practical ones: how do I keep my computer awake while Claude Code runs without leaving it on all night, what happens when the laptop sleeps mid-session, and can I wake the PC from my phone to start one?", "This guide is the answer in one arrangement: the machine sleeps until you want it, one button wakes it, holds it awake, starts Claude Code headlessly in a folder you chose in advance, and hands you the live session in the Claude app — then lets the machine drift back to sleep when you are done. Start `claude remote-control` yourself at the keyboard and the same free agent notices, and holds the machine awake for exactly as long as it runs. {{brand.name}} works with Claude Code as a compatible launcher; Claude Code itself, and the Anthropic account it signs in with, stay entirely yours. And since {{brand.name}} joined the Claude connectors directory, the whole of it — the setup included — runs from a chat, which is where the walkthrough below starts." ], "sections": [ { "title": "The problem: the session has to start at the machine", "body": [ "Remote Control is a genuinely good feature: start a Claude Code session in a terminal, and the Claude website or phone app can drive it from wherever you are. The catch sits in the first clause. The session starts in a terminal, on the machine — which means the machine is awake and somebody is at a keyboard on it, and that somebody has so far been you.", "So the arrangements people actually end up with are the two this whole site exists to retire. Either the dev box stays on around the clock for sessions that run a couple of hours a day — 40 to 100 idle watts, all night, every night — or it stays on anyway so a remote-desktop route can reach it, and you thumb `claude` into a phone-sized picture of a terminal, which works in the way that eating soup with a fork works." ] }, { "title": "Keeping the computer awake while Claude Code runs, without leaving it on", "body": [ "The usual answer is to stop the machine sleeping: `caffeinate` in a Mac terminal, a keep-awake plugin or tray app on Windows, or the power settings set to never. They all work the same way and fail the same way: they hold the machine up while you remember to run them, go on holding it after the session is over, and can do nothing about a machine that has already gone to sleep — the laptop that closed at ten o'clock stays closed until somebody opens it. Even our own **Keep awake…**, on Plus and Pro, is only the bounded form of the same idea: a window you choose, after which the machine sleeps by itself.", "The free [agent](/agent) takes the reverse position: let the machine sleep, wake it when you want it, and hold it awake only while it is in use. On Windows, macOS and Linux, the agent notices a running `claude remote-control` process and holds the machine awake for as long as it runs — whether you typed the command in a terminal or pressed **Remote AI…** on the dashboard. Nothing to remember, nothing to type before you leave: start the session and the hold is there. While it runs, the machine's row reads **in use — Claude Code**, so your phone can see what is keeping it up.", "When the session ends, the agent holds the machine for ten more minutes, long enough to reconnect after a drop, and then lets it go, as at the end of any hold: a machine on a cable goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it, a machine on a certified smart plug, on the paid plans, shuts down cleanly with the switch left on for the next **Wake**, and a Wi-Fi-only machine with no plug is left to its own power settings, because nothing could wake it again. Asleep, it costs nothing until the next session wakes it; **A sleeping PC cannot wake itself** below says what sends that wake.", "On a Mac, install from the installer package rather than the bare download: the package carries the helper that lets the Mac say goodbye before it sleeps, so the dashboard reads the sleep the moment it happens and offers the wake. A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only; [how to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) has the Mac and laptop cases. Starting the session from the dashboard is on the Windows agent today — on a Mac or on Linux, start `claude remote-control` at the keyboard, and the hold, the ten minutes and the sleep afterwards are the same." ] }, { "title": "When your laptop or Mac sleeps mid-session", "body": [ "The complaint under most of these searches: the session was going fine, the lid closed or the idle timer fired, and the phone now shows a session that no longer answers. That is what sleep does. The process is suspended with everything else, the connection drops, and nothing you send from the phone reaches it until the machine is up again — the messages wait, and the session picks them up after the next wake.", "With the free [agent](/agent) on the machine, that stops being the normal case. While `claude remote-control` runs the machine is held, so the idle timer never fires; closing the lid still sleeps a laptop, on every operating system, because the lid is a person's decision. If the machine does go — the lid, or the ten minutes after a session ran out — the agent says goodbye on the way down, on Windows, on Linux and, from the installer package, on a Mac, so the row reads **asleep as of** a minute ago rather than a green line that stopped being true, and it offers **Wake**. Press it from your phone and a desktop machine on a cable is back in seconds, provided something on its network is awake to send the wake — the section below names the three things that can — with a fresh session one tap away on Windows, **Remote AI…**, and one command away at the keyboard elsewhere.", "The limits are the hardware's, and no product changes them: a laptop on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all, a Mac wakes over Ethernet only and never from full power-off, and a MacBook off its dock is a laptop on Wi-Fi. An Apple-silicon desktop Mac on a certified plug can be switched on from off, on the paid plans. [How to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) covers the settings that make a machine wakeable and every route for sending the wake." ] }, { "title": "Set up from inside Claude, without leaving the chat", "speakers": { "you": "You", "claude": "Claude" }, "body": [ "Since {{brand.name}} joined the Claude connectors directory, the setup runs from inside a chat, and this is what it looks like end to end. Open [the {{brand.name}} listing](https://claude.ai/directory/rooster-wake), press **Add**, then **Connect**; sign in with your email when {{brand.name}} asks — an emailed link, so the address is the whole account — and press **Approve** on the consent page. Connecting runs nothing by itself — no tool fires and no chat opens — so on an account with no machine yet the next page is **Connected. One step left.**: the install commands with your address already in them, the first thing to ask Claude, and a button back to Claude. A welcome email with the same commands arrives at sign-up, for the moment you are at the PC.", "Then open any Claude chat — the website, the desktop app or the phone app — and type the thing that page suggested. On an empty account, with your own address in the lines, Claude answers:", { "you": "list my machines", "claude": [ "No machine is saved on this account yet, so there is nothing here to reach. Install the free {{brand.name}} agent on the computer you want to control and one machine gets you, with nothing else on the network: whether it is up, sleep it from anywhere, hold it awake while a job runs — it goes back to sleep ten minutes after the last activity — and, on Windows, a Claude Code session in a folder on it while it is up. It has to be run at that computer; the machine registers itself on the account as soon as the agent starts.", "Windows — paste into a terminal window (it asks once to allow the install):", { "code": "msiexec /i {{brand.apex}}/agent/{{brand.slug}}-agent.msi ENROLEMAIL=you@example.com" }, "macOS — download the installer package and open it:", { "code": "{{brand.apex}}/agent/{{brand.slug}}-agent.pkg" }, "Then paste this into Terminal:", { "code": "sudo {{brand.slug}}-agent enrol --email you@example.com" }, "Linux — paste into Terminal (on a Raspberry Pi swap linux-amd64 for linux-arm64):", { "code": "curl -fLo {{brand.slug}}-agent '{{brand.apex}}/api/agent/download?platform=linux-amd64'\nchmod +x {{brand.slug}}-agent\nsudo ./{{brand.slug}}-agent install --email you@example.com" }, "Waking it once it has slept needs something else on the network that is awake: the same agent on a box that already stays on, a dongle, or a linked voice assistant. A laptop on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by any of them, so that one you wake at the keyboard or by its lid — everything above still works on it.", "Then ask me to list your machines again. The full walkthrough: {{brand.apex}}/run-claude-code-remotely" ] }, "That is the install, and it is the one part of this that has to happen at the PC rather than in the chat. Windows asks once to allow it; a Mac opens the package — signed and notarised by Apple, so there is no warning to click past — and the line under it joins that Mac to your account; Linux fetches the binary by name and runs `install` with sudo, and on a Pi the platform is linux-arm64. No MAC address to find, no form to fill: the machine registers itself on your account the moment the agent starts. Back in the chat, ask again:", { "you": "list my machines", "claude": [ "1 machine saved on this account.", "Laptop (00:00:5E:00:53:01): up, agent connected. Once Laptop sleeps nothing on the account can wake it: the only agent is on Laptop itself.", "A sleeping machine cannot wake itself, so something else on the account has to send the wake. Any one of these does it: the free Alexa skill — enable it and link the account, then say \"Alexa, turn on Laptop\" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT); the agent on a machine you mark as always on — a NAS, a Home Assistant box, a mini PC or a Pi ({{brand.app}}/emitters#always-on); or a {{brand.name}} dongle ({{brand.apex}}/dongle-kit)." ] }, "The second sentence on that row is the one to read twice, and it has a section of its own below, **A sleeping PC cannot wake itself**: the agent on Laptop sleeps with Laptop, so an account with nothing else on it has nothing that can send the wake. Everything else already works — status, and a session while the machine is up — and the moment a second waker is in place, the sentence goes away, in the chat and on the dashboard.", "The session is one sentence too. Name the folder the first time: while the machine has no saved workspace, Claude saves that folder as one and starts the session in it — provided the folder was trusted once by running `claude` in it at the keyboard, a rule that has not changed. With workspaces already saved, Claude names them and asks which.", { "you": "start a Claude session on Laptop in C:\\dev\\my-app", "claude": [ "Saved C:\\dev\\my-app as the workspace \"my-app\" (id 1) on \"Laptop\"; list_machines offers it from now on.", "A Claude session is running on \"Laptop\". Open Claude on any device — claude.ai, the desktop or mobile app — and the session is there to work in. The machine is held awake for it until 18:52.", "That start used one of the month's included sessions — 9 remain; the meter resets on the 1st." ] }, "From here the rest of this guide applies unchanged: the session is Claude Code exactly as if you had started it at the desk, the answer carries the session's own link — the same handoff **Open in Claude** makes on the dashboard — the hold lapses on its own, and the machine sleeps again. The dashboard is optional throughout; when you want it, \"give me a dashboard link\" answers with a one-time sign-in link that lasts ten minutes, works once, and signs in whoever opens it — so open it yourself rather than forwarding it." ] }, { "title": "One button: wake, hold, start, hand off", "body": [ "On the {{brand.name}} dashboard, a machine whose agent supports Remote AI has a **Remote AI…** button on its row. Press it, pick the workspace folder and how long to hold the machine awake, and the rest happens without you. If the machine is asleep it is woken first — by an emitter that is awake, the free [agent](/agent) on another machine that stays on or a dongle, never by the sleeping PC itself, because software on a sleeping machine is asleep along with it. Then the agent starts Claude Code headlessly in the folder you registered, and the machine's card offers **Open in Claude**: the live session, in the Claude app or on the Claude website, on whatever device you pressed the button from.", "The hold is explicit about time, and it works like a parking meter. You choose the window, the card shows the deadline (\"held awake until 14:52\"), and it lapses by itself — a session you forget does not become a machine that never sleeps again. Need longer? Add time from the held-awake chip on the machine's row (+15 minutes or +1 hour), and five minutes before any hold lapses your phone gets a tap — land on the dashboard, top it up, carry on. **End session** on the same card stops the session, releases the hold, and the machine goes back to following its own sleep schedule.", "The session itself is Claude Code exactly as if you had started it at the desk: your install, your sign-in, your Claude plan. {{brand.name}} starts and stops the process, holds the machine awake, and never sees the conversation or your Anthropic credentials." ], "media": { "src": "/media/remote-ai-session.30de19c6.png", "width": 948, "height": 371, "alt": "A machine row on the dashboard with a live Remote AI session: 'Remote AI session live — Claude is working in cloud-cut — held awake until 14:52', with Open in Claude and End session buttons, and the answer line 'Session ready — open Claude on your phone.'", "caption": "A running session on a real machine row — **Open in Claude** is the handoff, the card shows the hold's deadline, and **End session** releases it." } }, { "title": "Setting it up", "body": [ "Four steps, all one-time, the first three at the machine — the same setup the chat above walks through, with the reasons attached. After this the machine can sleep on a clear conscience." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**Install the free agent on the PC itself.** The [agent](/agent) is what starts and stops Claude Code, holds the machine awake and reports the session's state to your dashboard; sessions started from the dashboard are on the Windows agent today, and the hold for a session you start at the keyboard is on Windows, macOS and Linux. The install line carries your address, and the agent registers the machine on your account by itself the moment it starts — no MAC address to find, no form to fill. This is the one piece of ours on the machine, and installing it is free on every plan.", "**Install Claude Code on the same machine and sign in.** [Get Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) if it is not there already; version 2.1.139 or newer — `claude --version` tells you, `claude update` moves you — signed in with your own Anthropic account. The session runs on whatever Claude plan that account has; nothing of ours sits in that path.", "**Trust each project folder once.** Open a terminal in the folder, run `claude`, and accept the trust prompt it shows on first use. That consent lives on the machine and there is deliberately no way to grant it remotely — a machine should not be talked into trusting a folder by anything other than the person at its keyboard.", "**Register the folder as a workspace.** Two ways, and they save the same thing: add it in the machine's settings on the dashboard — a label and its path — or, while the machine has no workspace yet, name the folder in your first session request from a Claude chat and it is saved as one on the way. Remote AI only ever starts sessions in workspaces saved like this: the agent resolves the folder from its own copy of the list and refuses a raw path over the wire, so the list is the whole of what a session can reach, whichever door the request came in by." ], "media": { "src": "/media/remote-ai-chooser.05dbfb9d.png", "width": 945, "height": 634, "alt": "A machine row with the Remote AI chooser open: a provider row fixed on Work with Claude, a registered workspace named cloud-cut with its folder path, hold durations of 1, 4, 8 and 24 hours, and Start and Cancel buttons.", "caption": "After setup, the whole flow is this card: pick the workspace, pick the hold, press **Start**." } }, { "title": "A sleeping PC cannot wake itself", "body": [ "The agent on a machine sleeps with the machine — software on a sleeping PC is asleep along with it — so the wake has to come from something else on the same network that is awake. Waking is the one step in the loop the sleeping machine cannot do for itself, and on an account whose only agent is on the very machine you want to wake, nothing can. The dashboard says so with a **Nothing can wake Laptop yet** card at the foot of the roster, and Claude's machine list says the same in its own words; both go quiet the moment something can. Three routes, cheapest first, and any one of them is enough:" ], "items": [ "**The free Alexa skill**, if there is an Echo in the house. [Enable the skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), link your {{brand.name}} account by signing in, and say \"Alexa, turn on Laptop\": the skill declares the machine's address to Alexa and your own Echo broadcasts the wake on your own network, which is why it is free on every plan. It works from the Alexa app wherever you are, so a phone is enough.", "**The same agent on a second machine that stays on** — a NAS, a mini PC, a Raspberry Pi, a home server, a second PC. [Install it there](/agent) with the same one line, and it becomes the emitter for every other machine on the network: the always-on box sends the wake, the sleeping one receives it. Nothing to buy if you already own something that never sleeps, and it is the route we recommend.", "**A dongle**, for the household with nothing always-on at all: a half-watt emitter you build from [the parts list](/dongle-kit), so that nothing bigger has to stay up on the sleeping machine's behalf. Once it is on the network the card goes, the sentence in Claude's answer goes, and the wake button on the sleeping machine's row is live." ] }, { "title": "The traps, named here instead of at midnight", "body": [ "Everything above works first time more often than not. These five are what we hit while proving the feature end to end — each is a one-time cost, and each looks like a bug until somebody names it." ], "items": [ "**Start remote control from the command line, not from inside a session.** The agent recognises a Claude Code session by the command that started it — `claude remote-control` — and holds the machine for it. Switching remote control on with the slash command inside a `claude` you already had open leaves the process looking like any other terminal session, so nothing is held: start it as `claude remote-control` and the hold follows, with **in use — Claude Code** on the row.", "**Your browser may ask a local-network permission.** The first time the dashboard checks whether the browser is sitting on one of your own machines, newer Chromium-based browsers show a one-click prompt about local network access. Allow it. Denying breaks nothing — the dashboard just stops knowing which machine you are at, which only costs a nicety — and the way back is the padlock in the address bar: site permissions, then local network access, then allow.", "**The Claude app's session list can lag.** After an End session, the Claude website's own list can show the session as connected for a minute or two, and the phone app for longer still; a message sent into a dead session there waits silently. The {{brand.name}} card is fed by the agent that owns the process, so trust it for session state: when the card says the session is over, it is over.", "**Private repositories need their grant.** Creating a session from the Claude app in an environment tied to a private GitHub repository needs that repository granted to the Claude website's own GitHub connection — the check is Anthropic's, fixed in their GitHub settings. Or sidestep it entirely: enter through the session {{brand.name}} hands you, which already exists and needs no creation step.", "**Wake-from-shutdown is its own discipline.** A machine that was shut down rather than slept only wakes with Windows fast startup off and the network adapter armed to wake. The machine's **Wake readiness** card on the dashboard names both and hands you the fix — read it before your first night away rather than after; the BIOS's own wake option is the one thing it cannot reach." ] }, { "title": "The connector: talk to your machines from any Claude chat", "body": [ "The button is one door; the connector is the other, and since the directory listing it is the door most people arrive by. Add {{brand.name}} to your Claude account as a connector, and any Claude chat — the website, the desktop app, the phone app — can see and act on your machines in plain language. The first thing to type is \"list my machines\": on an empty account it answers with the install itself, and after that it is the inventory every other request draws on — \"which of my machines are awake?\", \"wake the office PC\", \"start a Claude session on my desktop in the folder I registered\". Ten tools carry the whole loop — listing and status, waking, readying a machine for wake, holding awake and releasing, starting and ending Remote AI sessions, sleep, and a one-time sign-in link to your dashboard — and waking is on every plan here too.", "Setup is one click: {{brand.name}} is in the Claude connectors directory, so open [the {{brand.name}} listing](https://claude.ai/directory/rooster-wake), press **Add**, then **Connect**, and approve on the {{brand.name}} consent page that opens — on an account with no machine yet, that page hands you the install before sending you back, as the walkthrough above shows. Adding it by hand works too, anywhere custom connectors do: in Claude's Customize area, open **Connectors** and add a custom connector — older instructions say Settings; the connectors screen moved — then paste `{{brand.mcp}}/mcp`, wait for both detection badges to light, and press **Add**. Either way the connector follows your account, so the phone app carries it with no extra step. The first time Claude reaches for a tool it asks your permission, tool by tool — that is Claude's own safety model doing its job, and you approve the ones you want it to have.", "Claude Code at a terminal reaches the same server without the connector screen: `claude mcp add --transport http {{brand.slug}} {{brand.mcp}}/mcp --header \"Authorization: Bearer \"`, with a key from your [API keys page]({{brand.app}}/keys) carrying only the scopes you want it to hold — API keys come with the paid plans, and the CLI saves the connection per project, so run it where you want it available. And a chat changes the surface, never the rules. Sessions started this way meter exactly as the button's do — ten a calendar month on the free plan, unmetered on Plus — and holds follow the plans they always have: inside a session the hold rides with it, and standalone keep-awake stays with the paid plans. Sleep asks for your explicit yes before anything sleeps, and there is deliberately no shutdown from a chat at all: a machine at full power-off may not be wakeable again without someone at the button.", "Two of the ten are worth knowing by name. Naming a folder in a session request, on a machine with no saved workspace, saves it as one before the session starts — the trust prompt at the keyboard still applies, and a machine that already has workspaces only starts in one of them, so a saved list is never widened from a chat. And \"give me a dashboard link\" mints a one-time sign-in link to the dashboard: ten minutes, single use, the account owner only — and it signs in whoever opens it, so it is for you and never for forwarding." ] }, { "title": "The same loop serves everything else that needs the box on", "body": [ "Nothing about wake, hold and sleep-again is specific to one tool. The identical loop serves a VS Code remote window, plain SSH, a long build you want to look in on from the sofa, or any of the newer agentic CLIs that keep a session alive on your own hardware: wake the machine, hold it awake for the window the job actually needs, connect with whatever the job takes, and let the hold lapse when you are done. Store a connect link against the machine and the dashboard hands you into your own client the moment the machine is up.", "The pieces price the same way whatever you connect with: waking is free on every plan, the hold that comes with a Remote AI session rides with the session, and holding a machine awake outside a session — like the rest of the power controls, sleep, restart and shutdown — is on the paid plans." ] }, { "title": "What it costs, and what you already own", "body": [ "The free plan includes ten Remote AI sessions a calendar month — deliberately enough to prove the whole loop from your phone before any money moves, and the meter resets on the first. The Plus plan at £{{price.plus}} a year runs sessions unmetered, and carries the keep-awake control and the power actions — sleep, restart, shutdown — that make living with a sleeping machine pleasant rather than merely possible.", "On hardware, the answer is that most developers already own everything this needs. A wake has to come from something awake on the machine's own network, and the free [agent](/agent) on any box that already stays on — a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a home server, a second PC — carries it at no cost. The dongle exists for the household with nothing always-on at all: a half-watt emitter, so that nothing bigger has to stay up on the sleeping machine's behalf. And if the machine happens to be awake already, no emitter is involved and the button simply starts the session.", "If your machine is a different shape of problem — a gaming rig you stream from, a work desktop, a fleet to patch, a homelab — [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan) maps the six common ones and points at the guide for each." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "How do I keep my computer awake while Claude Code is working?", "a": "Install the free [agent](/agent) on the machine and start the session — that is the whole of it. On Windows, macOS and Linux, the agent notices a running `claude remote-control` process and holds the machine awake for as long as it runs, whether you typed the command at the keyboard or pressed **Remote AI…** on the dashboard, and the row reads **in use — Claude Code** while it does. When the session ends the machine is held for ten more minutes, then goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it. Nothing to type before you leave and nothing left running afterwards, which is the difference from `caffeinate` or a keep-awake plugin: those hold the machine up until you remember to stop them, and cannot wake one that has already slept. For a hold with no session behind it — a build, a download — **Keep awake…** on Plus and Pro holds the machine for a window you choose." }, { "q": "Will Claude Code keep running if my Mac goes to sleep?", "a": "No. Sleep suspends the session with everything else on the Mac, and the phone shows a session that no longer answers until the Mac is up again; what you sent meanwhile waits for it. With the free agent, the Mac is held awake while `claude remote-control` runs, so the idle timer never gets its chance, and when the session ends the hold lasts ten more minutes before the Mac goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it. Install it from the installer package rather than the bare download: the package carries the helper that lets the Mac say goodbye before it sleeps, so the dashboard reads the sleep the moment it happens. To wake a sleeping Mac from your phone it has to be on Ethernet — a Mac wakes by packet over a cable only, from sleep only, and a MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all. Starting the session from the dashboard is on the Windows agent today; on a Mac, start it at the keyboard and the agent does the rest." }, { "q": "Can I wake my PC to start a Claude Code session from my phone?", "a": "Yes. Open the dashboard on your phone, press **Remote AI…** on the machine's row, pick the workspace and how long to hold it, and press **Start**: the PC is woken if it is asleep, held awake for the window you chose, Claude Code's remote control is started in that folder, and the row offers **Open in Claude** — the session, in the Claude app on the same phone. With the connector added, the same request works in words from any Claude chat. Two conditions. The wake has to come from something on the machine's own network that is awake — the free agent on a box that stays on, a dongle, or by voice through [the free Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) — because a sleeping PC cannot wake itself; and starting sessions this way is on the Windows agent today. The free plan includes ten Remote AI sessions a calendar month; Plus and Pro run them unmetered." }, { "q": "Does this work with `claude remote-control` started from the terminal?", "a": "Yes, and it is the case most people have. The agent watches for the process rather than for anything it launched itself, so a session you start by typing `claude remote-control` at the keyboard is held exactly as one started from the dashboard: the row reads **in use — Claude Code**, the machine stays awake while the process runs, and the ten-minute grace follows its end. No flag, no wrapper, no change to how you start Claude Code — on every plan, on Windows, macOS and Linux. The one shape it cannot see is remote control switched on from inside a `claude` you already had open, because the process then looks like any other terminal session; start it as `claude remote-control` and the hold follows." }, { "q": "What happens when the session ends?", "a": "The **in use — Claude Code** chip clears and the agent holds the machine for ten more minutes, so a dropped session can be picked straight back up. Then the hold lapses and the machine is put back where it was found: if nobody is using it, a machine on a cable goes back to sleep by itself, and a machine on a certified smart plug, on the paid plans, shuts down cleanly with the switch left on for the next **Wake**; if somebody is at it, it stays up for them. A session started from the dashboard also carries the window you chose, which stands beneath it until it runs out — **End session** on the card stops the session and releases that hold together. The sleep at the meter's end is the same on a Mac and on Linux as on Windows." }, { "q": "Does {{brand.name}} see my code or my Claude conversation?", "a": "No. The agent starts the Claude Code process, stops it, holds the machine awake and reports that the session exists — that is the whole of its involvement. The session runs as your own user on your own machine, signed in with your own Anthropic account; the conversation travels between your machine and Anthropic exactly as it does when you start `claude` by hand, and your credentials are never seen, stored or proxied by anything of ours." }, { "q": "Do I need a paid Claude plan, or a paid {{brand.name}} plan?", "a": "Separate questions with separate answers. The session runs on whatever Claude Code arrangement you already have — your sign-in, your plan, your limits; we neither add to them nor sit between you and them. On our side, the free plan includes ten Remote AI sessions a calendar month, which is enough to prove the loop from your phone; the Plus plan at £{{price.plus}} a year runs them unmetered and adds keep-awake and the power actions. Waking a machine is free on every plan, always." }, { "q": "Can I set it up without leaving Claude?", "a": "Yes, with one exception, and it is the exception you would want. Connecting from the directory listing, listing machines, saving the workspace and starting the session all happen in the chat — on an empty account, Claude's answer to \"list my machines\" is the install itself, with your address already in the commands. The one thing that has to be run at the PC is that install: an agent that could be put on a machine from a chat would be an agent anyone could put on your machine from a chat. Paste the line, ask Claude to list your machines again, and carry on from there." }, { "q": "Can it start a session in any folder on the machine?", "a": "No, and the refusal is the security model. Sessions start only in saved workspaces — added in the machine's settings on the dashboard, or saved from a Claude chat by naming the folder in your first session request while the machine has none — and only in folders where you ran `claude` once at the keyboard and accepted its trust prompt. The agent resolves the folder from its own copy of the workspace list and refuses a raw path sent over the wire; the chat route saves the workspace first and then starts by its id. The trust prompt is the guard neither route can pass: a folder nobody trusted at the machine is a folder no session can start in, whoever holds the account." }, { "q": "What happens if I never press End session?", "a": "The hold you chose lapses on its own — that is what the window is for — and the machine goes back to following its normal sleep policy, so a forgotten session costs you a few hours of electricity rather than a permanently awake PC. The session itself sleeps with the machine: messages you send it from the Claude app while it sleeps wait, and are picked up after the next wake. Ending it from the card is still the tidy close — one press stops the process and releases the hold together." }, { "q": "Can people I share my account with start sessions on my machines?", "a": "No. Starting sessions and registering workspaces are owner-only — stricter than sharing. A person you invite can wake a machine, or with the right permission put it to sleep, but only you can start code running on one of your machines." }, { "q": "Is this Claude only, or will other tools work?", "a": "The sessions it starts are Claude Code sessions. Other tools work through the same loop today: the identical wake and hold serve a VS Code remote window or plain SSH, with your own connect link stored against the machine. Waking is free on every plan; keep-awake outside a session rides the paid plans." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions developers ask before wiring this up", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Install the free agent", "href": "/agent" }, { "label": "See the plans", "href": "/#pricing" }, { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" } ] }, "student": { "$note": "The student guide (2026-09-05, Philip's brief after the search research): the top result for 'wake up pc remotely' is a forum thread from exactly this reader — the powerful desktop at home, a laptop in halls, a game to stream, and no wish to leave the rig on all term. THE ANGLE THIS PAGE IS BUILT ON: the packet is sent AT HOME, so the sender is the family's Echo or a machine there that stays on anyway, nobody at home presses anything after setup day, and halls Wi-Fi — eduroam, the campus VPN, a shared address for a thousand rooms — is never in the path; the student never touches the home router. Built to the wake-any-PC guide's shape and pinned by guides-copy.test.mjs the same way the gaming and work-PC retrofits are: the four-route table row for row with the home page's `routes` (triggers with the how-to's), the how-to's six troubleshooting causes verbatim plus one of this reader's own (the router switched off at night, the sender unplugged), the Mac and laptop note in the how-to's facts, three of the how-to's real figures, the meter's-end sentences, sleep attributed as tiers.js has it (ten a month on Free, unmetered on Plus and Pro), and every Alexa or Echo mention carrying the skill's store URL in the same string. The streaming section names the reader's own clients as tools — Steam's streaming, Moonlight with Sunshine, Parsec — the licence the gaming guide's connect step already uses, and claims nothing about their internals beyond the one fact that matters: a client can only reach a host that is already awake. The four FAQ questions Philip asked for lead the list in his order. Static description at most 160 characters; title tag equals the heading; 2,400 to 3,200 words of visible text, the table allowed to push it a little past.", "path": "/wake-home-pc-from-university", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-09-05", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 5 September 2026", "title": "How to wake your home PC from university (and put it back to sleep after) — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "How to wake your home PC from university (and put it back to sleep after)", "lead": [ "The powerful desktop is at home; you are in halls with a laptop that cannot run the coursework software, does not hold the files, and will not play anything recent. The desktop does not have to be switched on all term to be useful to you: it can sleep at a few watts, hold itself awake while you are actually working on it, and drop back to sleep when you stop. Neither of the usual answers is necessary — leaving it on all term at forty to a hundred watts on your parents’ electricity, or messaging somebody at home to press the button — because a machine can be woken from anywhere in seconds by a packet sent inside the house.", "This guide is the arrangement for a student away in term time: the settings to change before you leave, what at home sends the wake — the family's [Echo](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) or a machine that is on anyway, so nobody at home presses anything and you never touch the router — how to wake the desktop from halls and know it is up, how to stream a game from it, and how it goes back to sleep. It ends with the Mac and laptop cases and the seven reasons a wake does nothing." ], "sections": [ { "title": "Why halls Wi-Fi does not matter", "body": [ "What wakes a sleeping PC is a magic packet: a broadcast on the machine's own network, carrying the network card's address, that the card listens for while the rest of the machine is off. A broadcast does not cross the internet, so the wake is never sent from halls. Something in the house sends it, and what you do from halls is ask that thing to.", "That is why the university's network is irrelevant. Nothing halls Wi-Fi does — blocking inbound traffic, sharing one address between a thousand rooms — is in the path. Your laptop or phone talks to a service over an ordinary outbound connection, the sender at home holds its own outbound connection to the same service, and the packet goes out from inside the house. Nothing is forwarded at the home router, your parents' public address can change every week, and halls Wi-Fi, eduroam, the campus VPN and a phone on 4G all work identically. [Wake-on-LAN without port forwarding](/wake-on-lan-without-port-forwarding) covers the mechanics; [how to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) is the any-machine version of this page." ] }, { "title": "Before you leave: make the PC wakeable", "body": [ "Do this at the desk before you leave; nothing on this page can fix a setting here from a hundred miles away. Four places, in this order, because each can hide the next. With the free [agent](/agent) on the PC, the **Wake readiness** section in the machine's settings on the dashboard reads the second and third for you and offers to fix both — on a Linux PC, the second alone, there being no fast startup to turn off; the [compatibility check](/#checker) gives the exact click-path for doing it by hand." ], "media": { "src": "/media/windows-wake-settings.9db9f8e5.svg", "width": 960, "height": 420, "alt": "Three panels naming the settings: Wake on LAN enabled and ErP Ready disabled in the BIOS; Allow this device to wake the computer, Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer and Wake on Magic Packet enabled on the Ethernet adapter; Turn on fast startup unticked in Power Options.", "caption": "The settings by their names — an illustration, not a screenshot, because the dialogs differ by board and driver." }, "ordered": true, "items": [ "**BIOS or UEFI: turn on Wake on LAN.** Boards call it **Wake on LAN**, **Power On By PCI-E**, **Resume by LAN** or **Wake on PCI-E**, usually under Power. If the board has **ErP Ready**, **EuP 2013** or a deep-sleep option, turn it off: it cuts standby power to the network card and undoes everything else here.", "**Device Manager: let the adapter wake the machine.** On the Ethernet adapter's *Power Management* tab, tick **Allow this device to wake the computer** and **Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer**. On the *Advanced* tab set **Wake on Magic Packet** to **Enabled**.", "**Power Options: turn fast startup off.** *Control Panel, Power Options, Choose what the power buttons do, Change settings that are currently unavailable*, then untick **Turn on fast startup**. With it on, Shut down is a partial hibernation that parks the network card un-armed — and Shut down is what a parent tidying the room will choose.", "**Use the cable, and leave it asleep rather than off.** Ethernet wakes reliably; Wi-Fi wakes rarely, from sleep only, and never on a laptop. Asleep, the PC draws two to five watts and comes back in seconds, so Sleep is the state to leave it in and to ask the household for; set *Hibernate after* to **Never** under *Change advanced power settings*, or it hibernates a few hours into term." ] }, { "title": "Choose what at home sends the wake", "body": [ "The packet leaves from inside the house, so the choice is which thing at home sends it — for a student, whichever is already there. Four things can, and any one is enough; none is the desktop itself, and none needs anybody at home to do anything after setup day. [How to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) walks each one." ], "table": { "hint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column.", "columns": [ { "id": "cost", "label": "What it costs" }, { "id": "triggers", "label": "What can trigger it" }, { "id": "limit", "label": "The one limit" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "voice", "label": "[An Amazon Echo you already own](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT)", "detail": "Our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has the Echo broadcast the packet on the home network; a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from halls reaches it.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", and a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from anywhere in the world.", "limit": "Voice and the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links on Pro, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below." } }, { "id": "agent", "label": "The free agent on a machine that already stays on", "detail": "A parent's desktop that never sleeps, the family NAS, a Raspberry Pi — or a container on any of them. Never the desktop you want to wake.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, voice and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro.", "limit": "Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on." } }, { "id": "plug", "label": "A certified smart plug", "detail": "For a machine that starts when power is applied — most desktop PCs can be set to, and Apple-silicon desktop Macs do. [The certified models](/certified-power-switches).", "cells": { "cost": "About £10", "triggers": "Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans.", "limit": "The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume." } }, { "id": "dongle", "label": "A dongle you build", "detail": "A Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the house where nothing else stays on. The [parts list](/dongle-kit) names them.", "cells": { "cost": "About £17 in parts", "triggers": "Everything the agent carries.", "limit": "A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case." } } ] }, "items": [ "**The family's Echo.** [Enable the skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), link your {{brand.name}} account, and give it the desktop's name and address; the Echo at home then puts the packet on the home network when you ask from the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) in halls — free on every plan.", "**The free agent on a machine at home that stays on.** [Install it](/agent) on a parent's always-on desktop, the family NAS or a Raspberry Pi — or [as a container on the NAS](/nas) — and that box sends for every other machine in the house. It cannot wake the machine it is installed on.", "**A certified smart plug.** For the desktop somebody shut down, or one that has frozen: it cuts and restores the mains, and a PC set to start when power returns boots from cold, on the paid plans.", "**A dongle you build.** A Raspberry Pi Pico W in a printed case, for the house where nothing stays on: half a watt behind the router, and everything the agent carries." ] }, { "title": "From halls: wake it, see it come up, connect", "body": [ "With a sender in place the desktop is a row on your dashboard, and the row carries a green **Wake** button. Press it from halls and the packet goes out on the home network a second or two later. With the free [agent](/agent) on the desktop itself, the row turns green the moment the machine is up — **up now — agent connected** — on every plan, usually within twenty seconds. On Plus and Pro, wake confirmation watches the home network for the machine answering and tells you it came up, or that it did not and why, pushed to your phone.", "The button is one of several ways to ask. By voice, [the free skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has the Echo at home do the same from a tap in the Alexa app anywhere; a **schedule** on the paid plans does it at seven on the evenings you always work; \"wake my desktop\" in any Claude chat does it in words, on every plan.", "Then connect with whatever the job needs: Remote Desktop for the coursework software, Moonlight or Parsec for a game. Store the client's own link against the machine and the row carries a **Remote Desktop** button that opens it, whatever the link's scheme; pressed while the desktop is asleep it wakes, waits for the free agent to say the machine is up, and opens the link as one press, and on Plus and Pro holds the machine for ten minutes while you sign in. If you unlock the desktop with a PIN or a fingerprint, read [the sign-in trap](/wake-work-pc-from-home) before term starts: a remote session wants the account password." ], "media": { "src": "/media/up-now-row.d2bcc050.png", "width": 949, "height": 235, "alt": "A machine row reading 'up now — agent connected — held awake until 12:18', with Remote AI and Remote Desktop buttons and, below, the Sleep button beside the hold, restart and shutdown controls.", "caption": "The row after a wake, with the free agent on the desktop at home: **up now — agent connected**, the **Remote Desktop** button that opens the stored link, and the controls for the other direction." } }, { "title": "Streaming a game from the rig at home to a laptop in halls", "body": [ "The most common reason a student wants any of this is a game the laptop cannot run. Steam's own streaming, Moonlight with Sunshine on the host, and Parsec all do the same job: the desktop at home runs the game and streams the picture to the laptop. All of them share one limit — the client can only find a host that is already awake, because the host software is asleep with the machine — and none can send the wake from outside the house.", "So the order is always the same. Wake: press **Wake** on the row, or ask through [the free skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT). Confirm: wait for **up now — agent connected**, the free agent on the desktop saying the machine is genuinely up rather than that a packet was sent. Connect: open the client, and the host is there. With the client's own link stored — `moonlight://`, `parsec://`, or your remote-desktop address — the row's **Remote Desktop** button does all three as one press.", "Before you leave, sign in to Steam and the launchers on the desktop, so a session from halls is not stuck at a two-factor prompt on a screen you cannot see, and pair the streaming client once over the home network. [Waking a gaming PC remotely](/wake-gaming-pc-remotely) covers the rig's own settings; [waking your PC for Steam Link, Moonlight or Parsec](/wake-pc-for-remote-play) is the streaming page." ], "media": { "src": "/media/wake-row.8a5654b8.png", "width": 949, "height": 236, "alt": "A machine row on the dashboard reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now', a power chip showing 0 W, the phrase to say to the voice assistant, and a green Wake button.", "caption": "A real row before the wake: this machine is off at its plug, so the green **Wake** is the plug's — the same button, whichever route the machine at home needs." } }, { "title": "Putting it back to sleep from halls", "body": [ "Waking needs nothing on the desktop; sleeping does, because something has to ask Windows to suspend. That is the free [agent](/agent) on the desktop, and with it there the row carries **Sleep**: press it from halls when you finish and the machine suspends in seconds. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add **Restart…** and **Shut down…** beside it.", "**Keep awake…**, on Plus and Pro, is the other half: hold the desktop up for a window you choose — a render, a download, a long session — and the row shows the deadline. When the timer ends the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it, on Windows, macOS and Linux. A machine on a certified plug shuts down cleanly instead, because it comes back by cold boot rather than resume, and the switch stays on for the next **Wake** to cycle it.", "The agent on the desktop cannot wake the machine it runs on — asleep, it is asleep along with it — so it does not replace the sender at home." ], "media": { "src": "/media/plug-off-row.fd220635.png", "width": 949, "height": 507, "alt": "A machine row reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now' with its power popover open: 'feed on, drawing nothing — the machine is off, or unplugged from the switch as of 5 d ago', 'hard recovery verified', the label WALL POWER, and a green Wake button below.", "caption": "A plug-powered machine after a clean shutdown: the switch stays on, drawing nothing, and the row's **Wake** boots it again from halls, on the paid plans." } }, { "title": "If the machine at home is a Mac, or a laptop", "body": [ "A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off. Turn on **Wake for network access**, keep it on mains and on a cable, and every sender above brings it back from sleep as it would a PC; the free [agent](/agent) runs on it too, from its installer package, so the row reads the sleep when it happens, offers **Wake**, and offers to turn that setting on for you — **Prepare for wake**, in the row's **Wake readiness** section. An Apple-silicon Mac mini or Mac Studio starts when power is applied, so a certified plug on the paid plans is its route from off.", "A MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all, and the same is true of a Windows laptop. A laptop left at home is reachable only if it lives on a dock with a cable and on mains, asleep — off the dock, nothing on this page reaches it." ] }, { "title": "When the wake does nothing", "body": [ "Nearly every \"it does not wake\" is one of these seven, each with a check — six to run at the desk before you leave, one about the house rather than the machine. The top ones are the most common, and each can mask the next." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**The adapter setting is off.** Check Device Manager, the Ethernet adapter: **Allow this device to wake the computer** ticked under *Power Management*, **Wake on Magic Packet** Enabled under *Advanced*. A driver update can silently reset both; with the free agent on the machine, the dashboard's **Wake readiness** section catches it and offers the fix.", "**Fast startup is on, and you shut down.** The machine is hibernated, not off, and the card is parked un-armed. Check *Choose what the power buttons do*: **Turn on fast startup** unticked. Or sleep the machine instead — sleep is the state the packet is best at.", "**The machine was off, not asleep.** From full power-off a PC listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed and the driver's after-shutdown wake is on; a Mac never listens. Check: sleep it, send the wake, and if that works the missing setting is the BIOS one.", "**It is on Wi-Fi.** Check whether the cable is in. Waking over Wi-Fi works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop.", "**Wrong network.** A broadcast does not cross a VLAN, a guest Wi-Fi, a client-isolated network or, on some mesh systems, a different node. Check that the sender and the machine share a segment — same switch, off the guest network.", "**A BIOS power setting.** ErP Ready, EuP 2013, deep sleep, or a mode that cuts the standby rail. Check the BIOS's power page with all of those off and Wake on LAN on — and take the right address: `getmac /v`, the **Ethernet** row, never a virtual adapter's.", "**Somebody at home switched the router off, or unplugged the sender.** A router off at night, a NAS shut down to save electricity, or a plug pulled out to charge a phone all look the same from halls: the wake fails, and the history says the sender was offline. Check the emitters page, which says when each sender was last seen; on the paid plans an alert reaches your phone when one stops reporting. Then ask the household for one thing — leave the router and the sender on — and put the desktop on a **schedule** on the paid plans, so trouble shows as a morning message rather than a missed deadline." ] }, { "title": "What it costs to leave it on all term", "body": [ "A desktop idling with the monitor off is commonly 40 to 100 watts, a gaming machine more, and a ten-week term is 1,680 hours. At 60 watts that is about 100 kWh a term left on, against roughly five asleep — multiply by the household's tariff, the only figure that matters. Across a year it is a few hundred kilowatt-hours on somebody else's electricity, which wins the argument about leaving it plugged in.", "The other half is not money: a sleeping machine is quiet, cool, and exposes nothing — which matters if you forwarded a Remote Desktop port at the home router before leaving. [The exposed Remote Desktop check](/exposed-remote-desktop) says whether that port is answering the internet; the free agent reports it on every plan. Other shapes of the problem — a rig you stream from anywhere, a work desktop, a NAS in a cupboard — are mapped in [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan), with a guide for each." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Can I do this from halls Wi-Fi?", "a": "Yes, from any connection — halls Wi-Fi, eduroam, the campus VPN, a phone on 4G. The packet that wakes the desktop is never sent from where you are: the family's [Echo](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), the free agent on a machine that stays on, or a dongle sends it inside the house, over an outbound connection it holds to the service. From halls you press **Wake** on the dashboard or the phone app, or ask by voice or in a Claude chat. A halls network that blocks inbound connections blocks nothing here, because nothing here is inbound." }, { "q": "Does someone at home have to press anything?", "a": "No — not after the day it is set up. The sender at home works on its own: an [Echo](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) already on the shelf, the free agent on a parent's desktop or the family NAS, or a dongle behind the router. The only ask is to leave the router and the sender on, and to sleep the desktop rather than shut it down. If it is shut down anyway, a certified smart plug on the paid plans boots it from cold, provided the PC is set to start when power returns." }, { "q": "Will it work for Steam Link, Moonlight or Parsec?", "a": "Yes, for all of them, in the same order: wake, confirm, connect. None of those clients can wake a sleeping host from outside the house — the host software is asleep with the machine — so the sender at home wakes it, the free agent on the desktop says **up now — agent connected** when it is genuinely up, and the client then connects to a host that is there. Store the client's own link against the machine and the row's **Remote Desktop** button does all three as one press. A stutter on halls Wi-Fi is the stream, not the wake." }, { "q": "What if my parents turn the router off at night?", "a": "Then nothing can be woken until it is back on: the sender at home needs the internet to hear you, and the desktop needs the home network to receive the packet. A wake sent in that window is recorded as failed — the sender was offline — on every plan, and on the paid plans an alert reaches your phone when the sender stops reporting. Ask for the router to stay on; put the desktop on a **schedule** on the paid plans at an hour the router is on; or accept it and wake the desktop in the morning." }, { "q": "Do I need to install anything on the desktop at home?", "a": "Not to wake it — the network card does that, below Windows, with nothing of ours on the machine. The free [agent](/agent) goes on the desktop for the other direction: sleeping it from halls, with ten sleeps a calendar month on the free plan and unmetered on Plus and Pro, where restart and shutdown join it; the row that reads **up now — agent connected** the moment it is up; and the **Wake readiness** check. The agent on the desktop cannot wake the machine it runs on, so the sender at home is still needed." }, { "q": "Can I do all of this on the free plan?", "a": "Yes. The free plan wakes one machine as often as you like — from the dashboard, the phone app, by voice through [the free skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) and in a Claude chat — keeps the last ten attempts with the reason any failed, and includes ten sleeps a calendar month through the free agent. Plus and Pro add confirmation that it came up, schedules, unmetered sleep with restart and shutdown, **Keep awake…** for a long render, and more machines. [Compare the plans](/#pricing) for the whole list." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions students ask before term starts", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "Install the free agent", "href": "/agent" }, { "label": "Compare the plans", "href": "/#pricing" } ] }, "remotePlay": { "$note": "The remote-play guide (2026-09-05, Philip's brief after the search research): two of the page-one results for the generic search are streaming-forum threads from this reader — Steam Link, Moonlight with Sunshine, Parsec — whose one problem is that the client can only find a host that is already awake, none of the clients can wake it from outside the house, and a gaming rig left on for the sake of it costs real money. THE PAGE'S SPINE is the order that never changes: wake, confirm, connect — with the free agent on the rig as the thing that says it is genuinely up, and the row's Remote Desktop button as the three steps in one press for a client with a link the allow-list carries (shared/connect-url.js: moonlight and parsec are on it, steam is NOT, so Steam Link is 'press Wake, wait for the green row, open the app' and never a stored link). The clients are named as the reader's own tools — the licence the gaming guide's connect step uses — and nothing is claimed about their internals beyond two facts: a client only reaches an awake host, and a client's own wake option, where it has one, is a magic packet on the network the client is on. Two things Philip asked for are sections of their own: the Wi-Fi-rig caveat (a Wi-Fi-only desktop is a maybe from sleep, a laptop on Wi-Fi never) and the plug route for a rig that will not wake from sleep whatever is set (a certified plug on the paid plans, cold boot, the board's power-loss option, the meter's-end clean shutdown with the switch left on). Built to the wake-any-PC guide's shape and pinned by guides-copy.test.mjs like the other approved persona guides: routes table row for row with the home page's, the six causes verbatim plus the will-not-wake-from-sleep cause, the Mac note in the how-to's facts, real figures, the meter's-end sentences, sleep as tiers.js has it, the five asked-for questions leading the FAQ, every Alexa or Echo mention carrying the store URL. Static description at most 160 characters; title tag equals the heading; 2,400 to 3,200 words, the table allowed to push it a little past.", "path": "/wake-pc-for-remote-play", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-09-05", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 5 September 2026", "title": "Wake your PC for Steam Link, Moonlight or Parsec, from anywhere — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Wake your PC for Steam Link, Moonlight or Parsec, from anywhere", "lead": [ "Streaming a game from your own PC works right up to the moment the PC is asleep. Steam Link, Moonlight with Sunshine on the host, and Parsec all connect to a host that is already running; a sleeping machine is running nothing, so the client shows an empty list or spins on \"connecting\", and none of them can wake it from the other side of a router. The usual fix is to leave the rig on — the loudest, most expensive machine in the house, drawing sixty watts and more so that a handheld can find it at eleven o'clock.", "This guide is the other arrangement: the rig sleeps at a few watts, you wake it from wherever you are, you know it is up before you open the client, it holds itself awake while you are playing or while a download runs, and it goes back to sleep ten minutes after you stop. It covers the settings that make a PC wakeable, what sends the wake, the wake-confirm-connect order every client needs, the Wi-Fi rig, the plug route for a machine that will not wake from sleep, the Mac and laptop cases, and the seven reasons a wake does nothing." ], "sections": [ { "title": "Why the client cannot find a sleeping host", "body": [ "Every streaming client works the same way: host software on the PC — Steam, Sunshine, the Parsec host — advertises itself, and the client finds it and connects. Asleep, the PC is not running that software, so there is nothing to find. Where a client offers a wake of its own, it is a magic packet sent on the network the client is on: useful from the sofa, useless from anywhere else, because a broadcast does not cross the internet.", "So the wake has to come from something inside the house that is awake and reachable from outside, and the streaming client's job starts only once the host is up. That is the whole of this page: put a sender on the network, make the rig wakeable, and keep the order — wake, confirm, connect. [How to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) is the any-machine version; [waking a gaming PC remotely](/wake-gaming-pc-remotely) goes deeper on the rig's own settings." ] }, { "title": "Make the rig wakeable first", "body": [ "Four settings account for almost every failure, in this order because each can hide the next. With the free [agent](/agent) on the PC, the **Wake readiness** section in the machine's settings on the dashboard reads the adapter and fast-startup settings for you and offers to fix both — on a Linux PC, the adapter setting alone, there being no fast startup to turn off; the [compatibility check](/#checker) gives the click-path for doing it by hand." ], "media": { "src": "/media/windows-wake-settings.9db9f8e5.svg", "width": 960, "height": 420, "alt": "Three panels naming the settings: Wake on LAN enabled and ErP Ready disabled in the BIOS; Allow this device to wake the computer, Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer and Wake on Magic Packet enabled on the Ethernet adapter; Turn on fast startup unticked in Power Options.", "caption": "The settings by their names — an illustration, not a screenshot, because the dialogs differ by board and driver." }, "ordered": true, "items": [ "**BIOS or UEFI: turn on Wake on LAN.** Boards call it **Wake on LAN**, **Power On By PCI-E**, **Resume by LAN** or **Wake on PCI-E**, usually under Power. If the board has **ErP Ready**, **EuP 2013** or a deep-sleep option, turn it off: it cuts standby power to the network card and undoes everything else here.", "**Device Manager: let the adapter wake the machine.** On the Ethernet adapter's *Power Management* tab, tick **Allow this device to wake the computer** and **Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer**. On the *Advanced* tab set **Wake on Magic Packet** to **Enabled**.", "**Power Options: turn fast startup off.** *Control Panel, Power Options, Choose what the power buttons do, Change settings that are currently unavailable*, then untick **Turn on fast startup**. With it on, Shut down is a partial hibernation that parks the network card un-armed. Set *Hibernate after* to **Never** under *Change advanced power settings* as well, or a rig slept at midnight is hibernated by morning and deaf to the packet.", "**Use the cable.** Ethernet wakes reliably and streams better. Wi-Fi wakes rarely, from sleep only, and never on a laptop — the Wi-Fi rig has its own section below." ] }, { "title": "Choose what sends the wake", "body": [ "The packet has to leave from inside the rig's own network, so the choice is which always-on thing in the house does the sending. Four things can, the first two you may already own, and any one is enough — and none of them is the rig itself. [How to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) walks each one for any machine." ], "table": { "hint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column.", "columns": [ { "id": "cost", "label": "What it costs" }, { "id": "triggers", "label": "What can trigger it" }, { "id": "limit", "label": "The one limit" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "voice", "label": "[An Amazon Echo you already own](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT)", "detail": "Our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has the Echo broadcast the packet on your home network — from the sofa by voice, from anywhere in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT).", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", and a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from anywhere in the world.", "limit": "Voice and the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links on Pro, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below." } }, { "id": "agent", "label": "The free agent on a machine that already stays on", "detail": "A NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box, a mini PC — or a container on any of them. Never the rig itself: an agent cannot wake the machine it runs on.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, voice and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro.", "limit": "Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on." } }, { "id": "plug", "label": "A certified smart plug", "detail": "For a rig set to start when power is applied — most desktop boards can be — and the one route for a machine that will not wake from sleep, or is fully off. [The certified models](/certified-power-switches).", "cells": { "cost": "About £10", "triggers": "Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans.", "limit": "The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume." } }, { "id": "dongle", "label": "A dongle you build", "detail": "A Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the household where nothing else stays on overnight. The [parts list](/dongle-kit) names them.", "cells": { "cost": "About £17 in parts", "triggers": "Everything the agent carries.", "limit": "A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case." } } ] }, "items": [ "**The Echo.** [Enable the skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), link your {{brand.name}} account, and give it the rig's name and network address; your own Echo then puts the packet on your own network, which is why it is free on every plan.", "**The free agent on a box that stays on.** [Install it](/agent) on a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box or a second PC — or [as a container on the NAS](/nas) — and that box sends for every other machine in the house. It cannot wake the machine it is installed on.", "**A certified smart plug.** For the rig that is genuinely off, frozen, or will not wake from sleep: it cuts and restores the mains, and a board set to start when power returns boots from cold, on the paid plans.", "**A dongle you build.** A Raspberry Pi Pico W in a printed case, for the household where nothing stays on: half a watt, and everything the agent carries." ] }, { "title": "Wake, confirm, connect — in that order", "body": [ "With a sender in place the rig is a row on your dashboard with a green **Wake** button. The order is always the same three steps, and the annoying part of remote play is the second — the fifteen seconds after the wake where you do not know whether to open the client yet.", "Wake: press **Wake** from any browser or the phone app, and the packet goes out on your network a second or two later. Confirm: with the free [agent](/agent) on the rig, the row turns green — **up now — agent connected** — the moment the machine is up, on every plan, usually within twenty seconds; that is the machine saying it is genuinely up, not the packet being sent. On Plus and Pro, wake confirmation watches your own network for the machine answering and tells you it came up, or that it did not and why, pushed to your phone. Connect: open the client, and the host is there.", "Store the client's own link against the machine — `moonlight://` or `parsec://` — and the row carries a **Remote Desktop** button that does all three as one press: pressed while the rig is asleep it sends the wake, waits for the agent to say the machine is up, and opens the link; on Plus and Pro it also holds the rig awake for ten minutes while the client connects. Steam Link has no link to store, so for Steam it is press **Wake**, wait for the green row, open the app." ], "media": { "src": "/media/up-now-row.d2bcc050.png", "width": 949, "height": 235, "alt": "A machine row reading 'up now — agent connected — held awake until 12:18', with Remote AI and Remote Desktop buttons and, below, the Sleep button beside the hold, restart and shutdown controls.", "caption": "After the wake, with the free agent on the rig: **up now — agent connected**, the **Remote Desktop** button that opens the stored link, and the controls for the other direction." } }, { "title": "The Wi-Fi rig, and the rig that will not wake from sleep", "body": [ "A desktop on Wi-Fi is a maybe. Waking over Wi-Fi means the adapter holding its place on the network through sleep and listening for the packet, which depends on the adapter, its driver and the router's key rotation; Modern Standby complicates it further. A laptop on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all. If a cable can reach the rig, run it — the stream wanted it anyway — and the maybe becomes a yes. If it cannot, test from the sofa: sleep the rig, send the wake, and if nothing happens the packet route is closed on this machine.", "For that rig, and for the one that refuses to wake from sleep whatever you set, there is a second route that never uses the packet. A [certified smart plug](/certified-power-switches) cuts and restores the mains, and a board whose power-loss option — **Restore AC Power Loss**, **AC BACK**, **Power On After Power Failure** — is set to power on boots from cold when power returns. The dashboard drives it through an agent or dongle on the same network, on the paid plans, with the same green **Wake**; the machine comes back by cold boot rather than resume, with nothing open. When you finish, the keep-awake timer's end on the paid plans shuts it down cleanly and the switch stays on, so the next **Wake** boots it again. The same plug [power-cycles a rig that has frozen](/remotely-power-cycle-a-frozen-pc) mid-game." ], "media": { "src": "/media/wake-row.8a5654b8.png", "width": 949, "height": 236, "alt": "A machine row on the dashboard reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now', a power chip showing 0 W, the phrase to say to the voice assistant, and a green Wake button.", "caption": "A real row: this machine is off at its plug, so the green **Wake** is the plug's — a cold boot for the rig the packet cannot reach, on the paid plans." } }, { "title": "Sleeping it again when you stop playing", "body": [ "Waking needs nothing on the rig; sleeping does, because something has to ask Windows to suspend. That is the free [agent](/agent) on the rig, and with it there the row carries **Sleep**: press it from the phone when you put the controller down and the machine suspends in seconds. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add **Restart…** and **Shut down…** beside it.", "**Keep awake…**, on Plus and Pro, is the other half: hold the rig up for a download or a long session, and the row shows the deadline. When the timer ends the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it, on Windows, macOS and Linux. A rig on a certified plug shuts down cleanly instead, because it comes back by cold boot rather than resume, and the switch stays on for the next **Wake** to cycle it.", "The agent on the rig cannot wake the machine it runs on — asleep, it is asleep along with it — so it does not replace the sender above." ], "media": { "src": "/media/plug-off-row.fd220635.png", "width": 949, "height": 507, "alt": "A machine row reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now' with its power popover open: 'feed on, drawing nothing — the machine is off, or unplugged from the switch as of 5 d ago', 'hard recovery verified', the label WALL POWER, and a green Wake button below.", "caption": "A plug-powered rig after a clean shutdown: the switch stays on, drawing nothing, and the row's **Wake** boots it again for the next session, on the paid plans." } }, { "title": "If the host is a Mac, or a laptop", "body": [ "A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off. Turn on **Wake for network access**, keep it on mains and on a cable, and every sender above brings it back from sleep as it would a PC; the free [agent](/agent) runs on it too, from its installer package, so the row reads the sleep when it happens, offers **Wake**, and offers to turn that setting on for you — **Prepare for wake**, in the row's **Wake readiness** section. An Apple-silicon Mac mini or Mac Studio used as a streaming host starts when power is applied, so a certified plug on the paid plans is its route from off.", "A MacBook, or a gaming laptop on Wi-Fi, cannot be woken by packet at all. A laptop on a dock with a cable is a desktop for these purposes; off the dock, nothing on this page reaches it. Only the host has to be wakeable — the handheld you stream to is awake in your hands." ] }, { "title": "When the wake does nothing", "body": [ "Nearly every \"it does not wake\" is one of these seven, each with a check you can run at the desk before you are back on the sofa. The top ones are the most common, and each can mask the next." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**The adapter setting is off.** Check Device Manager, the Ethernet adapter: **Allow this device to wake the computer** ticked under *Power Management*, **Wake on Magic Packet** Enabled under *Advanced*. A driver update can silently reset both; with the free agent on the machine, the dashboard's **Wake readiness** section catches it and offers the fix.", "**Fast startup is on, and you shut down.** The machine is hibernated, not off, and the card is parked un-armed. Check *Choose what the power buttons do*: **Turn on fast startup** unticked. Or sleep the machine instead — sleep is the state the packet is best at.", "**The machine was off, not asleep.** From full power-off a PC listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed and the driver's after-shutdown wake is on; a Mac never listens. Check: sleep it, send the wake, and if that works the missing setting is the BIOS one.", "**It is on Wi-Fi.** Check whether the cable is in. Waking over Wi-Fi works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop.", "**Wrong network.** A broadcast does not cross a VLAN, a guest Wi-Fi, a client-isolated network or, on some mesh systems, a different node. Check that the sender and the machine share a segment — same switch, off the guest network.", "**A BIOS power setting.** ErP Ready, EuP 2013, deep sleep, or a mode that cuts the standby rail. Check the BIOS's power page with all of those off and Wake on LAN on — and take the right address: `getmac /v`, the **Ethernet** row, never a virtual adapter's.", "**It will not wake from sleep whatever you set, or it woke and the host software was not running.** Some boards and adapters never arm for the packet. Check by sleeping the rig and sending the wake from the sofa, twice; if it never comes up, the plug route above is the answer — a certified plug on the paid plans boots it from cold, and a keep-awake timer's end on the paid plans shuts it down cleanly, switch on. If it comes up and the client still finds nothing, the host software did not start: set Steam, Sunshine or the Parsec host to run at sign-in, with automatic sign-in on for the account, or the rig wakes to a lock screen with no host behind it." ] }, { "title": "What the rig costs awake, and what you already own", "body": [ "A gaming desktop idling with the monitors off is commonly 60 to 120 watts. Asleep, it is two to five. Left on so the client can find it, the difference over a year is several hundred kilowatt-hours — multiply by your own tariff, the only figure that matters. The other half is not money: a rig that sleeps between sessions is quieter, cooler, and not running its fans at three in the morning.", "On hardware, most households already own the sender: an [Echo](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), a NAS, a Raspberry Pi or a Home Assistant box carries the wake at no cost; the dongle exists for the house with nothing always-on, and the plug for the rig the packet cannot reach. If the rig is at home and you are away in term time, [waking your home PC from university](/wake-home-pc-from-university) is this page for that reader; other shapes of the problem are mapped in [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan)." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Can Steam Link wake my PC?", "a": "Not from outside the house. Steam Link connects to a host that is already running Steam; a sleeping PC is running nothing, so the app finds no host. A client's own wake, where it has one, is a broadcast on the network the client is on: fine from the sofa, nothing from anywhere else. The wake has to come from something inside the house that stays on: an [Echo](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) through the free skill, the free agent on a box that stays on, a certified plug on the paid plans, or a dongle. Then Steam Link connects as it always did." }, { "q": "Does Moonlight or Sunshine have wake-on-LAN?", "a": "Sunshine is the host, so it is asleep with the machine and can wake nothing. Moonlight, the client, can send a magic packet to a host it has paired with — and like any client's wake it is a broadcast on the network the client is on, so it works on the sofa and not from a train. From outside the house the sender on the rig's network wakes it, the free agent on the rig says **up now — agent connected** when it is genuinely up, and Moonlight then finds Sunshine as usual. Store `moonlight://` against the machine and the row's **Remote Desktop** button does the wake, the wait and the launch as one press." }, { "q": "My PC is on Wi-Fi, will this work?", "a": "Best effort, and worth testing before you rely on it. Waking over Wi-Fi depends on the adapter, its driver and the router's key rotation, and Modern Standby complicates it further; it works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop. Sleep the rig and send the wake from the sofa: if it comes up, it will come up from anywhere. If it does not, run a cable, or take the plug route — a certified smart plug on the paid plans boots a rig set to start when power returns, and never needs the packet." }, { "q": "How do I know it is up before I open the client?", "a": "Wake-on-LAN cannot tell you; there is no acknowledgement in the protocol. With the free [agent](/agent) on the rig, the row turns green — **up now — agent connected** — the moment the machine is up, on every plan, usually within twenty seconds: the machine itself reporting in, rather than a packet being sent. On Plus and Pro, wake confirmation watches your own network for the machine answering and tells you it came up, or that it did not and why, pushed to your phone." }, { "q": "Can I set it to sleep again after I stop playing?", "a": "Yes, two ways. Press **Sleep** on the row from your phone — the free [agent](/agent) on the rig does it, ten sleeps a calendar month on the free plan and unmetered on Plus and Pro, where **Restart…** and **Shut down…** join it. Or let it happen by itself: **Keep awake…** on Plus and Pro holds the rig for the window you choose, and when the timer ends the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it — on Windows, macOS and Linux. A rig on a certified plug shuts down cleanly instead, with the switch left on for the next **Wake**." }, { "q": "Do I have to install anything on the gaming PC?", "a": "Not to wake it — the network card does that, below Windows, with nothing of ours on the machine. The free [agent](/agent) goes on the rig for three things: the row that reads **up now — agent connected** the moment it is up; sleeping it from your phone, ten a calendar month on the free plan and unmetered on Plus and Pro; and the **Wake readiness** check. The agent on the rig cannot wake the machine it runs on, so the sender on the network is still needed. [Compare the plans](/#pricing) for what each carries." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions people ask before streaming from a rig that sleeps", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "Install the free agent", "href": "/agent" }, { "label": "Compare the plans", "href": "/#pricing" } ] }, "remoteDesktopSleeps": { "$note": "The remote-desktop guide (2026-09-05, Philip's brief after the search research): 'remote desktop wake up' already sends impressions, and the reader is the Chrome Remote Desktop, TeamViewer, AnyDesk or Windows Remote Desktop user whose PC has gone to sleep by the time they connect. The page names the reader's own tools — TeamViewer, AnyDesk, Chrome Remote Desktop — and needs no \"$compare\" flag to do it: the rivals ban home-copy.test.mjs enforces covers the services that sell what we sell, not widely known remote-access tools, which any page may name where it shows what they leave undone and what we add (Philip 2026-09-05). guides-copy.test.mjs pins the licence: the tools are named as the reader's own clients, the one claim made about their wake features is the fact this page turns on — a remote-desktop tool's built-in wake needs another machine awake on the same network running that tool, so from outside the house with nothing awake there it sends nothing — and no named tool shares a string with a price. THE FACTS THE PAGE STATES, each pinned: the roster's chip reads **in use — Remote Desktop** or **in use — Chrome Remote Desktop** (app/public/js/in-use-facts.js SESSION_KIND_NAMES) while a session lasts and the machine will not sleep under it; ten minutes after the session ends the hold lapses (GRACE_ON_END_SINCE) and the meter's end puts the machine back to sleep unless somebody is using it (shared/meter-end.js), a plug-powered machine shutting down cleanly with the switch left on; the free agent reports whether the machine's own Remote Desktop port answers from the public internet, on every plan (the Connect Facts page, linked); the sign-in trap belongs to the work-PC guide and is linked, not retold. Built to the wake-any-PC guide's shape and pinned like the other approved persona guides: routes table row for row with the home page's, the six causes verbatim plus the tool's-own-wake cause, the Mac note in the how-to's facts, real figures, sleep as tiers.js has it, the five asked-for questions leading the FAQ, every Alexa or Echo mention carrying the store URL. Static description at most 160 characters; title tag equals the heading; 2,400 to 3,200 words, the table allowed to push it a little past.", "path": "/remote-desktop-wakes-the-pc", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-09-05", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 5 September 2026", "title": "Remote desktop, but the PC is asleep: wake it first, from anywhere — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Remote desktop, but the PC is asleep: wake it first, from anywhere", "lead": [ "You open Chrome Remote Desktop, TeamViewer, AnyDesk or the Remote Desktop app, and the machine you need is greyed out, offline, or spinning on \"connecting\". Nothing is broken. The PC went to sleep an hour after you left it, a sleeping PC is running nothing, and a remote-desktop client can only connect to a host that is running. The tool's own wake feature, where it has one, needs another computer awake on the same network running the same tool — which is the machine most people do not have.", "This guide is the fix, and it is an arrangement rather than a setting: the PC sleeps by default, you wake it from anywhere before you connect, you know that it is up, you connect with the tool you already use, it stays awake for as long as your session lasts, and it goes back to sleep ten minutes after you disconnect. It covers the settings that make a PC wakeable, what sends the wake, what the dashboard shows while you are connected, whether your Remote Desktop port is exposed, the Mac and laptop cases, and the seven reasons a wake does nothing." ], "sections": [ { "title": "Why the session fails: a sleeping PC is running nothing", "body": [ "Every remote-desktop tool works the same way: a host program on the PC — the Chrome Remote Desktop host, the TeamViewer or AnyDesk service, Windows' own Remote Desktop listener — waits for a connection, and the client on your laptop or phone reaches it. Asleep, the PC is not running that program, so the client finds an offline machine — and sleep is where Windows puts a desktop after half an hour of nobody touching it.", "Some of those tools carry a wake-on-LAN feature, and it has one requirement that is easy to miss: the wake is a magic packet, a broadcast on the PC's own network, so it has to be sent by another machine on that network running the same tool, awake at the moment you press the button. At home with a second PC always on that works; from a hotel with nothing awake in the house it sends nothing. The fix on this page is a sender that is always there and reachable from anywhere, and the order that never changes — wake first, then connect. [How to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) is the any-machine version of it." ] }, { "title": "Make the PC wakeable before you leave", "body": [ "Four settings account for almost every failure, in this order because each can hide the next. With the free [agent](/agent) on the PC, the **Wake readiness** section in the machine's settings on the dashboard reads the adapter and fast-startup settings for you and offers to fix both — on a Linux PC, the adapter setting alone, there being no fast startup to turn off; the [compatibility check](/#checker) gives the click-path for doing it by hand." ], "media": { "src": "/media/windows-wake-settings.9db9f8e5.svg", "width": 960, "height": 420, "alt": "Three panels naming the settings: Wake on LAN enabled and ErP Ready disabled in the BIOS; Allow this device to wake the computer, Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer and Wake on Magic Packet enabled on the Ethernet adapter; Turn on fast startup unticked in Power Options.", "caption": "The settings by their names — an illustration, not a screenshot, because the dialogs differ by board and driver." }, "ordered": true, "items": [ "**BIOS or UEFI: turn on Wake on LAN.** Boards call it **Wake on LAN**, **Power On By PCI-E**, **Resume by LAN** or **Wake on PCI-E**, usually under Power. If the board has **ErP Ready**, **EuP 2013** or a deep-sleep option, turn it off: it cuts standby power to the network card and undoes everything else here.", "**Device Manager: let the adapter wake the machine.** On the Ethernet adapter's *Power Management* tab, tick **Allow this device to wake the computer** and **Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer**. On the *Advanced* tab set **Wake on Magic Packet** to **Enabled**.", "**Power Options: turn fast startup off.** *Control Panel, Power Options, Choose what the power buttons do, Change settings that are currently unavailable*, then untick **Turn on fast startup**. With it on, Shut down is a partial hibernation that parks the network card un-armed. Set *Hibernate after* to **Never** under *Change advanced power settings* as well, or a PC slept at six is hibernated by midnight and deaf to the packet.", "**Use the cable, and sleep it rather than shut it down.** Ethernet wakes reliably; Wi-Fi wakes rarely, from sleep only, and never on a laptop. Sleep is the state the packet is best at." ] }, { "title": "Choose what sends the wake", "body": [ "The packet has to leave from inside the PC's own network, so the choice is which always-on thing there sends it — the second machine the tools' own wake wants, except reachable from anywhere and as small as [an Echo](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), a NAS or a half-watt dongle. Four things can, and any one is enough. [How to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) walks each one." ], "table": { "hint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column.", "columns": [ { "id": "cost", "label": "What it costs" }, { "id": "triggers", "label": "What can trigger it" }, { "id": "limit", "label": "The one limit" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "voice", "label": "[An Amazon Echo you already own](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT)", "detail": "Our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has the Echo broadcast the packet on that network — at home for a home PC, at the office for an office PC — from anywhere in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT).", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", and a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from anywhere in the world.", "limit": "Voice and the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links on Pro, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below." } }, { "id": "agent", "label": "The free agent on a machine that already stays on", "detail": "A NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box, a server, a colleague's desktop that never sleeps — or a container on any of them. Never the PC you connect to: an agent cannot wake the machine it runs on.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, voice and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro.", "limit": "Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on." } }, { "id": "plug", "label": "A certified smart plug", "detail": "For a machine that starts when power is applied — most desktop PCs can be set to, and Apple-silicon desktop Macs do — and the one route for a machine that is fully off. [The certified models](/certified-power-switches).", "cells": { "cost": "About £10", "triggers": "Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans.", "limit": "The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume." } }, { "id": "dongle", "label": "A dongle you build", "detail": "A Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the network with no always-on machine. The [parts list](/dongle-kit) names them.", "cells": { "cost": "About £17 in parts", "triggers": "Everything the agent carries.", "limit": "A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case." } } ] }, "items": [ "**The Echo.** [Enable the skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), link your {{brand.name}} account, and give it the PC's name and network address; your own Echo then puts the packet on your own network when you ask from the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), which is why it is free on every plan.", "**The free agent on a box that stays on.** [Install it](/agent) on a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box or a second PC — or [as a container on the NAS](/nas) — and that box sends for every other machine on the network. It cannot wake the machine it is installed on.", "**A certified smart plug.** For the machine that is genuinely off, or frozen: it cuts and restores the mains, and a PC set to start when power returns boots from cold, on the paid plans.", "**A dongle you build.** A Raspberry Pi Pico W in a printed case, for the network where nothing stays on: half a watt, and everything the agent carries." ] }, { "title": "Wake it first, then connect", "body": [ "With a sender in place the PC is a row on your dashboard with a green **Wake** button. Press it from any browser or the phone app and the packet goes out on the PC's network a second or two later. With the free [agent](/agent) on the PC, the row turns green — **up now — agent connected** — the moment it is, on every plan, usually within twenty seconds. On Plus and Pro, wake confirmation watches the PC's own network for the machine answering and tells you it came up, or that it did not and why, pushed to your phone.", "Then connect with the tool you already use. Store its link against the machine — an `rdp://` address, `anydesk://`, `vnc://`, or the tool's own link — and the row carries a **Remote Desktop** button that opens it, whatever the scheme; pressed while the PC is asleep it sends the wake, waits for the agent to say the machine is up, and opens the link as one press, and on Plus and Pro holds the machine for ten minutes while you sign in. Chrome Remote Desktop opens from a web address, so store that. And if you unlock that PC with a PIN or a fingerprint, read [the sign-in trap](/wake-work-pc-from-home) before you travel: a remote session wants the account password." ], "media": { "src": "/media/wake-row.8a5654b8.png", "width": 949, "height": 236, "alt": "A machine row on the dashboard reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now', a power chip showing 0 W, the phrase to say to the voice assistant, and a green Wake button.", "caption": "A real row before the wake: this machine is off at its plug, so the green **Wake** is the plug's — the same button, whichever route the machine needs." } }, { "title": "While you are connected: the row says in use", "body": [ "With the free [agent](/agent) on the PC, the row reads **in use — Remote Desktop** while a Windows Remote Desktop session is connected, **in use — Chrome Remote Desktop** while a Chrome Remote Desktop session is, and names AnyDesk, Parsec, RustDesk or TeamViewer the same way. The chip means what it says: that session is holding the machine open, and it will not sleep while the session lasts — a **Keep awake…** timer on Plus and Pro running beneath it stays armed for when you disconnect.", "When the session ends, the agent holds the machine for ten more minutes, long enough to pick up a dropped connection, and then lets it go. Ten minutes after you disconnect, or when a **Keep awake…** timer on Plus and Pro runs out, the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it — on Windows, macOS and Linux — soa session you forgot to close does not become a PC that never sleeps again." ], "media": { "src": "/media/up-now-row.d2bcc050.png", "width": 949, "height": 235, "alt": "A machine row reading 'up now — agent connected — held awake until 12:18', with Remote AI and Remote Desktop buttons and, below, the Sleep button beside the hold, restart and shutdown controls.", "caption": "The row after a wake, with the free agent on the machine: **up now — agent connected**, the **Remote Desktop** button that opens the stored link, and the power controls beneath it." } }, { "title": "When you disconnect: back to sleep, nothing left listening", "body": [ "Waking needs nothing on the PC; sleeping does, because something has to ask Windows to suspend. That is the free [agent](/agent) on the machine, and with it there the row carries **Sleep**: press it from your phone when you have what you came for and the PC suspends in seconds, to two to five watts. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add **Restart…** and **Shut down…** beside it.", "**Keep awake…**, on Plus and Pro, is the other half: hold the machine up for a window you choose, and the row shows the deadline. When the timer ends the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it. A machine on a certified plug shuts down cleanly instead, because it comes back by cold boot rather than resume, and the switch stays on for the next **Wake** to cycle it. Asleep, the PC draws a few watts and exposes nothing — the next section.", "The agent on the PC cannot wake the machine it runs on — asleep, it is asleep along with it — so it does not replace the sender above." ], "media": { "src": "/media/plug-off-row.fd220635.png", "width": 949, "height": 507, "alt": "A machine row reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now' with its power popover open: 'feed on, drawing nothing — the machine is off, or unplugged from the switch as of 5 d ago', 'hard recovery verified', the label WALL POWER, and a green Wake button below.", "caption": "A plug-powered machine after a clean shutdown: the switch stays on, drawing nothing, and the row's **Wake** boots it again for the next session, on the paid plans." } }, { "title": "Is your Remote Desktop port exposed?", "body": [ "The arrangement most people fall into has two steps that each look reasonable: leave the PC on because an off PC cannot be reached, then forward a port at the router so Remote Desktop can be reached from outside. An exposed Remote Desktop port is the single most brute-forced service on the internet and a leading first foothold for ransomware. Install the free [agent](/agent) and the machine's card tells you whether its own Remote Desktop port is answering from the public internet, names the port, and says how to close it — on every plan, free included. [The exposed Remote Desktop check](/exposed-remote-desktop) explains what it found on one of our own machines.", "The tools that dial out — Chrome Remote Desktop, TeamViewer, AnyDesk and their kind — need no open port, which is the right shape, and so is Windows Remote Desktop reached through a mesh or VPN network. Either way, the machine that sleeps between sessions exposes nothing at all, because there is no machine listening. Waking it needs no open port either: every sender above connects outward, so the router is never touched — [Wake-on-LAN without port forwarding](/wake-on-lan-without-port-forwarding) covers the mechanics." ] }, { "title": "If the machine is a Mac, or a laptop", "body": [ "A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off. Turn on **Wake for network access**, keep it on mains and on a cable, and every sender above brings it back from sleep as it would a PC; the free [agent](/agent) runs on it too, from its installer package, so the row reads the sleep when it happens, offers **Wake**, and offers to turn that setting on for you — **Prepare for wake**, in the row's **Wake readiness** section. An Apple-silicon Mac mini or Mac Studio starts when power is applied, so a certified plug on the paid plans is its route from off; reach it with Screen Sharing or a tool that dials out, never a port opened at the router.", "A MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all, and the same is true of a Windows laptop; docked, on a cable and on mains, asleep, it is a desktop for these purposes, and off the dock nothing on this page reaches it. [Waking your work PC from home](/wake-work-pc-from-home) covers the office-side checks; other shapes of the problem are mapped in [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan)." ] }, { "title": "When the wake does nothing", "body": [ "Nearly every \"it does not wake\" is one of these seven, each with a check you can run at the desk before you travel. The top ones are the most common, and each can mask the next." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**The adapter setting is off.** Check Device Manager, the Ethernet adapter: **Allow this device to wake the computer** ticked under *Power Management*, **Wake on Magic Packet** Enabled under *Advanced*. A driver update can silently reset both; with the free agent on the machine, the dashboard's **Wake readiness** section catches it and offers the fix.", "**Fast startup is on, and you shut down.** The machine is hibernated, not off, and the card is parked un-armed. Check *Choose what the power buttons do*: **Turn on fast startup** unticked. Or sleep the machine instead — sleep is the state the packet is best at.", "**The machine was off, not asleep.** From full power-off a PC listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed and the driver's after-shutdown wake is on; a Mac never listens. Check: sleep it, send the wake, and if that works the missing setting is the BIOS one.", "**It is on Wi-Fi.** Check whether the cable is in. Waking over Wi-Fi works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop.", "**Wrong network.** A broadcast does not cross a VLAN, a guest Wi-Fi, a client-isolated network or, on some mesh systems, a different node. Check that the sender and the machine share a segment — same switch, off the guest network.", "**A BIOS power setting.** ErP Ready, EuP 2013, deep sleep, or a mode that cuts the standby rail. Check the BIOS's power page with all of those off and Wake on LAN on — and take the right address: `getmac /v`, the **Ethernet** row, never a virtual adapter's.", "**The tool's own wake was pressed from outside the house, or the machine never slept.** A remote-desktop tool's wake-on-LAN sends the packet from another machine on the PC's network running that tool; with nothing awake there, nothing is sent. Check the wake history on the dashboard: a wake that went out is listed with its sender, one that did not says why — then press **Wake** there, so the sender is one that is always on. And check the row is not already **up now — agent connected**: a machine that never slept needs no wake, and a client that fails then has a sign-in or network problem, not a wake one." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Can Chrome Remote Desktop wake a sleeping PC?", "a": "No. Chrome Remote Desktop connects to a host program running on the PC, and a sleeping PC is running nothing, so the machine shows as offline; it has no wake feature of its own. The wake has to come from something inside the PC's network that stays on and is reachable from anywhere: an [Echo](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) through the free skill, the free agent on a box that stays on, a certified plug on the paid plans, or a dongle. Press **Wake** on the dashboard, wait for **up now — agent connected** with the free agent on the PC, then open Chrome Remote Desktop as usual." }, { "q": "Why does TeamViewer's wake-on-LAN need another computer?", "a": "Because a wake-on-LAN packet is a broadcast on the sleeping PC's own network, and no router carries one in from the internet. TeamViewer's wake, like AnyDesk's, therefore has another machine on that network — one running the tool, awake at the moment you ask — send the packet on your behalf; with no such machine, or with it asleep too, nothing is sent. The arrangement on this page is the same idea with a sender that is always there and needs no PC left on: an [Echo](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) you own, the free agent on a NAS or a Pi, or a half-watt dongle, asked from your phone anywhere." }, { "q": "Will my session keep the PC awake?", "a": "Yes, and with the free [agent](/agent) on the PC the dashboard says so: the row reads **in use — Remote Desktop**, **in use — Chrome Remote Desktop**, or names the tool that is connected, and the machine will not sleep while that session lasts. A **Keep awake…** timer on Plus and Pro running beneath the session stays armed for the moment you disconnect, and the five-minute reminder about it stays quiet while you are connected. The session itself is what keeps the machine up; the row is there so your phone can see it." }, { "q": "What happens when I disconnect?", "a": "The chip clears and the agent holds the machine for ten more minutes, so a dropped connection can be picked straight back up. Then, unless somebody is using it, the machine goes back to sleep by itself — on Windows, macOS and Linux — or,on a certified smart plug, shuts down cleanly with the switch left on for the next **Wake**. Press **Sleep** on the row instead if you would rather not wait: ten sleeps a calendar month on the free plan, unmetered on Plus and Pro." }, { "q": "Is my Remote Desktop port exposed?", "a": "Install the free [agent](/agent) on the machine and its card tells you: it reports whether that machine's own Remote Desktop port is answering from the public internet, names the port, and says how to close it, on every plan, free included, and it looks only at the machine's own address. If it is open, close the forward at the router and reach the machine through a tool that dials out or a mesh network instead; [the exposed Remote Desktop check](/exposed-remote-desktop) explains what an open port attracts and what we found on one of our own machines." }, { "q": "Do I need to install anything on the PC?", "a": "Not to wake it — the network card does that, below Windows, with nothing of ours on the machine. The free [agent](/agent) goes on the PC for the rest: the row that reads **up now — agent connected** the moment it is up, the **in use** chip while you are connected, the sleep afterwards — ten a calendar month on the free plan, unmetered on Plus and Pro with restart and shutdown beside it — and the exposed-port check. The agent on the PC cannot wake the machine it runs on, so the sender on the network is still needed. [Compare the plans](/#pricing) for what each carries." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions people ask when the PC has gone to sleep", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your PC can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "Install the free agent", "href": "/agent" }, { "label": "Compare the plans", "href": "/#pricing" } ] }, "mac": { "$note": "The Mac guide (2026-09-05, Philip's brief after the search research): the Mac mini, iMac or Mac Studio owner — the outreach target's exact case — and the MacBook owner who wants the same and cannot have it. THE FACTS, stated in the same words everywhere on the site: a Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off; **Wake for network access** has to be on and the Mac on mains; an Apple-silicon desktop Mac starts when power is applied, so a certified plug on the paid plans switches it on from off; a MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all, and a MacBook has a battery, so the plug route is not its route either. WHAT IS PROVEN AND WHAT IS DOCUMENTED, said out loud because the difference matters: the installer package (signed and notarised), the keep-awake hold, the helper that lets the Mac say goodbye before it sleeps, and the sleep when the timer ends are proven on Apple hardware in our own tests; waking a Mac by packet over Ethernet is standard macOS behaviour, stated 'as macOS documents', and not something we have measured on a Mac of our own — guides-copy.test.mjs pins both sentences so neither can quietly become a claim. The agent's own switching-on of Wake for network access (the dashboard's Prepare for wake) sits in the same not-measured column: proven against fixtures and the CI runner, never yet watched on a Mac in the room, so the page says so beside the packet-wake sentence and never lists it among the proven. Apple's own Wi-Fi wake goes through a sleep proxy on an Apple TV or HomePod and is not a magic packet; the page says so and claims nothing about it. Built to the wake-any-PC guide's shape and pinned like the other approved persona guides: routes table row for row with the home page's, the six causes verbatim (the network ones apply to a Mac as they are; the Windows ones are the PC on the same desk) plus the Mac's own seventh, three real dashboard figures (no Windows settings illustration on a Mac page), the meter's-end sentences, sleep as tiers.js has it, the five asked-for questions leading the FAQ, every Alexa or Echo mention carrying the store URL, and the Claude Code case linked rather than retold. Static description at most 160 characters; title tag equals the heading; 2,400 to 3,200 words, the table allowed to push it a little past.", "path": "/wake-a-mac-remotely", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-09-05", "dateModified": "2026-09-05", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 5 September 2026", "title": "How to wake a Mac remotely, and why a Mac on Wi-Fi will not — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "How to wake a Mac remotely, and why a Mac on Wi-Fi will not", "lead": [ "A Mac mini under the desk, an iMac in the study, a Mac Studio in the office: the machine with the licences and the files on it. Asleep it costs a few watts, and the free agent’s package sleeps it for you, holds it awake while somebody is working on it and lets it go back to sleep ten minutes after they stop. Getting it back is the step that depends on the hardware, and on a Mac that comes with rules Windows guides skip: a Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off, and a MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all.", "This guide is the Mac's own version of [how to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely): which Macs this works for and which it does not, the one setting to turn on, what sends the wake, how to know the Mac woke, how the free agent's package lets the dashboard read a Mac's sleep and put it back to sleep when a timer ends, the plug route that switches a desktop Mac on from off, the MacBook and Claude Code cases, and the seven reasons a wake does nothing." ], "sections": [ { "title": "What a Mac will and will not do", "body": [ "Four facts decide everything below. A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off: the hardware does not keep the network port armed once the machine is shut down, and no product changes that. Over Wi-Fi, a sleeping Mac is reachable only through Apple's own sleep proxy — an Apple TV or HomePod on the same network answering for it — which is Apple's mechanism, not a magic packet, and nothing on this page sends it. An Apple-silicon desktop Mac — a Mac mini, an iMac, a Mac Studio — starts when power is applied, a route from off that a PC has to be configured for. And a MacBook has a battery, so it neither starts when power is applied nor wakes by packet on Wi-Fi.", "Which of those we can vouch for is worth stating. The free [agent](/agent)'s installer package, the keep-awake hold on Plus and Pro, the goodbye a Mac says before it sleeps, and the sleep when the timer ends are proven on Apple hardware in our own tests. Waking a Mac by packet over Ethernet is standard macOS behaviour — **Wake for network access**, as macOS documents — and not something we have measured on a Mac of our own — nor, yet, is the agent's switching it on; every sender on this page sends the packet a Mac listens for, and the [compatibility check](/#checker) walks the Mac case step by step." ] }, { "title": "Turn on Wake for network access, and use the cable", "body": [ "One setting, one cable, one habit. The setting is **Wake for network access**, and the free [agent](/agent) on the Mac offers to turn it on: while it is off the Mac's row shows **wakes may fail**, and **Prepare for wake** in the row's **Wake readiness** section switches it on at once and reports **Wake for network access switched on.** The section then reads **Ready to wake ✓**. A Mac on Wi-Fi it will not arm, and says why. By hand: on a desktop Mac, *System Settings, Energy* (older versions say *Energy Saver*); on a MacBook, *System Settings, Battery, Options*, set to **Only on power adapter** or **Always**.", "Plug the Mac into Ethernet — the built-in port on a Mac mini, an iMac or a Mac Studio, or a dock's port for a MacBook on mains — and take the address of that port, not the Wi-Fi one: *System Settings, Network, Ethernet, Details, Hardware*, or `networksetup -listallhardwareports` in Terminal. Then sleep the Mac when you leave rather than shutting it down — *Apple menu, Sleep*, or leave it to the idle timer. Asleep, a Mac draws a watt or two and comes back in a second or two with everything where you left it; shut down, nothing on this page reaches it except the plug.", "Test it at the desk first: sleep the Mac, send the wake from the same network, and if the screen lights the route is open. If it does not, the seven causes at the foot of this page are the checklist." ] }, { "title": "Choose what sends the wake", "body": [ "The packet has to leave from inside the Mac's own network, so the choice is which always-on thing there does the sending. Four things can, the first two you may already own, and any one is enough — and none of them is the Mac itself. [How to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) walks each one; the plug row is the Mac's route from off." ], "table": { "hint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column.", "columns": [ { "id": "cost", "label": "What it costs" }, { "id": "triggers", "label": "What can trigger it" }, { "id": "limit", "label": "The one limit" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "voice", "label": "[An Amazon Echo you already own](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT)", "detail": "Our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has the Echo broadcast the packet on your network — the packet a Mac on Ethernet listens for — by voice or from anywhere in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT).", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", and a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from anywhere in the world.", "limit": "Voice and the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links on Pro, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below." } }, { "id": "agent", "label": "The free agent on a machine that already stays on", "detail": "A NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box, a mini PC — or a container on any of them. Never the Mac you want to wake: an agent cannot wake the machine it runs on.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, voice and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro.", "limit": "Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on." } }, { "id": "plug", "label": "A certified smart plug", "detail": "Apple-silicon desktop Macs start when power is applied, so this is the one route from off for a Mac mini, an iMac or a Mac Studio — and most desktop PCs can be set to. [The certified models](/certified-power-switches).", "cells": { "cost": "About £10", "triggers": "Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans.", "limit": "The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume." } }, { "id": "dongle", "label": "A dongle you build", "detail": "A Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the network with no always-on machine. The [parts list](/dongle-kit) names them.", "cells": { "cost": "About £17 in parts", "triggers": "Everything the agent carries.", "limit": "A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case." } } ] }, "items": [ "**The Echo.** [Enable the skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), link your {{brand.name}} account, and give it the Mac's name and its Ethernet port's address; your own Echo then puts the packet on your own network, which is why it is free on every plan.", "**The free agent on a box that stays on.** [Install it](/agent) on a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box or a second machine — or [as a container on the NAS](/nas) — and that box sends for every other machine on the network. It cannot wake the machine it is installed on.", "**A certified smart plug.** For the desktop Mac that is shut down, or frozen: it cuts and restores the mains, and an Apple-silicon desktop Mac boots from cold when power returns, on the paid plans.", "**A dongle you build.** A Raspberry Pi Pico W in a printed case, for the network where nothing stays on: half a watt, and everything the agent carries." ] }, { "title": "Wake it from anywhere, and know it woke", "body": [ "With a sender in place the Mac is a row on your dashboard with a green **Wake** button. Press it from any browser or the phone app and the packet goes out on the Mac's network a second or two later; a desktop Mac off at its plug is offered the plug's wake instead. Wake-on-LAN has no acknowledgement, so two things tell you it landed. With the free [agent](/agent) on the Mac, the row turns green — **up now — agent connected** — the moment it is up, on every plan. On Plus and Pro, wake confirmation watches the Mac's own network for it answering and tells you it came up, or that it did not and why, pushed to your phone.", "Then connect with what you already use: Screen Sharing, SSH, or a remote-desktop tool that dials out. Store the link against the machine — `vnc://` for Screen Sharing, `ssh://` for a terminal — and the row carries a **Remote Desktop** button that opens it; pressed while the Mac is asleep it sends the wake, waits for the agent to say the Mac is up, and opens the link as one press, and on Plus and Pro holds the Mac for ten minutes while you sign in. The same hold for an SSH shell or a file transfer — **in use — SSH** on the row, and sleep ten minutes after it goes quiet — is the subject of [sleep your Linux box and still SSH in](/sleep-your-linux-box-and-still-ssh-in), and the rule is the same on a Mac." ], "media": { "src": "/media/wake-row.8a5654b8.png", "width": 949, "height": 236, "alt": "A machine row on the dashboard reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now', a power chip showing 0 W, the phrase to say to the voice assistant, and a green Wake button.", "caption": "A real row: this machine is off at its plug, so the green **Wake** is the plug's — the route a desktop Mac takes from off, on the paid plans." } }, { "title": "Install the agent from the package, and the dashboard reads the sleep", "body": [ "Waking needs nothing on the Mac. Everything else on this page is the free [agent](/agent), and on a Mac it comes as an installer package rather than a paste. Your dashboard offers the package: it is signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens without a warning to click past, and it puts the agent in place along with the background service that starts it with the machine and the helper that lets the Mac say goodbye before it sleeps. One line in Terminal afterwards, which your dashboard writes with your credential in it, joins that Mac to your account.", "The helper is the part that matters on a Mac. When macOS is about to sleep — the idle timer, the Apple menu, the lid — the agent says goodbye on the way down, so the row reads **asleep as of** a moment ago rather than a green line that stopped being true, and offers **Wake**. The bare macOS binary is still served for anyone who would rather fetch it by name, but it carries no sleep detection: a Mac on it reports its sleep only when the dashboard notices the silence. The package is the supported route, and the one the rest of this page assumes." ], "media": { "src": "/media/up-now-row.d2bcc050.png", "width": 949, "height": 235, "alt": "A machine row reading 'up now — agent connected — held awake until 12:18', with Remote AI and Remote Desktop buttons and, below, the Sleep button beside the hold, restart and shutdown controls.", "caption": "The row after a wake, with the free agent on the machine: **up now — agent connected**, the **Remote Desktop** button that opens the stored link, and the controls for the other direction." } }, { "title": "Sleeping it from your phone, and the timer that does it for you", "body": [ "With the agent on the Mac the row carries **Sleep**: press it from the dashboard, the phone app or a Claude chat and the Mac suspends in seconds. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add **Restart…** and **Shut down…** beside it — the second worth a pause on a Mac, which comes back from shut down only by the plug.", "**Keep awake…**, on Plus and Pro, is the other half: hold the Mac up for a window you choose, and the row shows the deadline. When the timer ends the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it, on Windows, macOS and Linux. A Mac on Wi-Fi with a certified plug shuts down cleanly instead — sleep would strand it, a cold boot brings it back — and the switch stays on for the next **Wake**; a Mac on Wi-Fi with no plug is left to its own settings, because nothing could wake it again.", "The agent on the Mac cannot wake the machine it runs on — asleep, it is asleep along with it — so it does not replace the sender above." ], "media": { "src": "/media/plug-off-row.fd220635.png", "width": 949, "height": 507, "alt": "A machine row reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now' with its power popover open: 'feed on, drawing nothing — the machine is off, or unplugged from the switch as of 5 d ago', 'hard recovery verified', the label WALL POWER, and a green Wake button below.", "caption": "A plug-powered machine after a clean shutdown: the switch stays on, drawing nothing, and the row's **Wake** boots it again — a desktop Mac's route from off, on the paid plans." } }, { "title": "Switching a desktop Mac on from off: the plug route", "body": [ "Nothing brings a shut-down Mac back by packet. What brings an Apple-silicon Mac mini, iMac or Mac Studio back is power: apply it and the machine starts, with no setting to find. A [certified smart plug](/certified-power-switches) on the paid plans cuts and restores the mains from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle on the same network, with the same green **Wake** — the row reads the machine as off at its switch while it is down, and it comes back by cold boot rather than resume, with nothing open. The same plug power-cycles a Mac that has frozen.", "The plug is never a MacBook's route — a battery makes cutting the mains meaningless, and a MacBook does not start when power returns — and the switch is never turned off: when a keep-awake timer on the paid plans ends on a plug-powered Mac, the agent shuts it down cleanly and the switch stays on for the next **Wake**." ] }, { "title": "MacBooks, and the Claude Code case", "body": [ "A MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all. On a dock with an Ethernet port, on mains, with **Wake for network access** set to **Only on power adapter** or **Always**, it is a desktop for these purposes — as macOS documents — and asleep on the dock is the state to leave it in. Off the dock, or on battery, nothing on this page reaches it, and the plug does not either.", "The reason many people arrive at this page is Claude Code: a session started on the Mac with `claude remote-control` that dies when the Mac sleeps. On a Mac as on Windows and Linux, the free agent notices a running `claude remote-control` process and holds the Mac awake for as long as it runs, then lets it go ten minutes after the session ends; the row reads **in use — Claude Code** while it does. Starting the session from the dashboard is on the Windows agent today — on a Mac, start it at the keyboard and the hold follows. [Running Claude Code remotely on a PC that sleeps](/run-claude-code-remotely) has the whole loop; other shapes of the problem are mapped in [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan)." ] }, { "title": "When the wake does nothing", "body": [ "Nearly every \"it does not wake\" is one of these seven, each with a check at the desk. The first six are the PC causes from the plain how-to — the network ones apply to a Mac as they stand, the Windows ones to the PC on the same desk — and the seventh is the Mac's own." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**The adapter setting is off.** Check Device Manager, the Ethernet adapter: **Allow this device to wake the computer** ticked under *Power Management*, **Wake on Magic Packet** Enabled under *Advanced*. A driver update can silently reset both; with the free agent on the machine, the dashboard's **Wake readiness** section catches it and offers the fix.", "**Fast startup is on, and you shut down.** The machine is hibernated, not off, and the card is parked un-armed. Check *Choose what the power buttons do*: **Turn on fast startup** unticked. Or sleep the machine instead — sleep is the state the packet is best at.", "**The machine was off, not asleep.** From full power-off a PC listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed and the driver's after-shutdown wake is on; a Mac never listens. Check: sleep it, send the wake, and if that works the missing setting is the BIOS one.", "**It is on Wi-Fi.** Check whether the cable is in. Waking over Wi-Fi works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop.", "**Wrong network.** A broadcast does not cross a VLAN, a guest Wi-Fi, a client-isolated network or, on some mesh systems, a different node. Check that the sender and the machine share a segment — same switch, off the guest network.", "**A BIOS power setting.** ErP Ready, EuP 2013, deep sleep, or a mode that cuts the standby rail. Check the BIOS's power page with all of those off and Wake on LAN on — and take the right address: `getmac /v`, the **Ethernet** row, never a virtual adapter's.", "**Wake for network access is off, the Mac is on battery, or it was shut down rather than slept.** Check *System Settings, Energy* on a desktop Mac, or *Battery, Options* on a MacBook, for **Wake for network access** on — **Only on power adapter** counts only while the adapter is in; with the agent on the Mac the row says **wakes may fail** and **Prepare for wake** fixes it. Check the Mac is on mains and on the cable, and that the address you gave the sender is the Ethernet port's, from `networksetup -listallhardwareports`, not the Wi-Fi one. And check how it was left: a shut-down Mac listens for nothing, so sleep it instead — or, for a desktop Mac, take the plug route above, on the paid plans." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Can a Mac be woken over Wi-Fi?", "a": "Not by a magic packet. A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only; over Wi-Fi, macOS wakes a sleeping Mac only through Apple's own sleep proxy — an Apple TV or HomePod on the same network answering for it — which is Apple's mechanism, not something any wake-on-LAN sender can trigger. So a MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all. Plug the cable in and it wakes as macOS documents; for a desktop Mac that must come back from off, a certified plug on the paid plans switches it on." }, { "q": "Why won't my Mac wake from shut down?", "a": "Because a shut-down Mac keeps its network port unpowered, so nothing is listening for the packet; **Wake for network access** works from sleep, never from off, and no product changes that. Sleep the Mac instead — asleep it draws a watt or two and wakes in a second or two — and if it must be shut down, give a desktop Mac a route back through power: an Apple-silicon Mac mini, iMac or Mac Studio starts when power is applied, so a certified smart plug on the paid plans boots it from cold with the same **Wake** button. A MacBook has a battery and gets no such route." }, { "q": "Does this work on a MacBook?", "a": "Only docked. A MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all; on a dock with an Ethernet port, on mains, with **Wake for network access** set to **Only on power adapter** or **Always**, it wakes as a desktop does — as macOS documents — and the address to give the sender is the dock's port, not the MacBook's Wi-Fi. Off the dock nothing on this page reaches it, and the plug route is closed to it too, because a battery-powered machine does not start when power returns." }, { "q": "Do I need to install anything on the Mac?", "a": "Not to wake it — the network port does that, below macOS, with nothing of ours on the machine. The free [agent](/agent) goes on the Mac for the rest: the row that reads **up now — agent connected** the moment it is up, the goodbye before sleep, the **Wake readiness** check that turns **Wake for network access** on, **Sleep** from your phone — ten a calendar month on the free plan, unmetered on Plus and Pro with restart and shutdown beside it — the keep-awake hold on Plus and Pro and the sleep when it ends, and the hold while `claude remote-control` runs. Install it from the installer package your dashboard offers, not the bare binary: the package carries the helper the goodbye needs. The agent on the Mac cannot wake the machine it runs on, so the sender on the network is still needed." }, { "q": "How do I put it back to sleep from my phone?", "a": "Press **Sleep** on the Mac's row in the phone app, the dashboard or a Claude chat, and the Mac suspends in seconds — the free [agent](/agent) on the Mac asks macOS to sleep, and the goodbye it says on the way down means the row reads asleep straight away. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add **Restart…**, **Shut down…** and **Keep awake…**, which holds the Mac for a window you choose and lets it sleep by itself when the timer ends unless somebody is using it. A shut-down Mac comes back only by the plug, so think before **Shut down…**." }, { "q": "Does this work with Claude Code on a Mac?", "a": "Yes. The free agent on the Mac notices a running `claude remote-control` process, holds the Mac awake for as long as it runs, shows **in use — Claude Code** on the row, and lets the Mac sleep ten minutes after the session ends unless somebody is using it. Starting a session from the dashboard is on the Windows agent today, so on a Mac you start it at the keyboard; waking the Mac afterwards from your phone needs the cable. [Running Claude Code remotely](/run-claude-code-remotely) covers the loop end to end, and [the plans](/#pricing) list what sits around it." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions Mac owners ask before setting this up", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your Mac can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "Install the free agent", "href": "/agent" }, { "label": "Compare the plans", "href": "/#pricing" } ] }, "sshSleep": { "$note": "The SSH guide (2026-09-05, Phase 5 of the SSH-sessions plan): the page for the segment whose machine sleeps under an SSH session, whose sshfs mount keeps a server out of sleep, and whose nightly rsync wants the box up for the copy and asleep after — the searches it targets are 'prevent sleep during ssh session', 'linux suspends while ssh connected' and 'server sleep when idle wake on lan ssh'. Built to the plain how-to's shape and pinned in guides-copy.test.mjs under APPROVED_PERSONAS: the four-route table row for row with the home page's, the how-to's six causes verbatim plus SSH's own seventh, the meter's-end sentences, real figures only (media/README.md rule 3 — the three dashboard rows the how-to carries; no 'in use — SSH' screenshot until one is captured on a real row), the six asked-for questions at the head of the FAQ. THE SESSION RULE ships in agent 0.19.0 (released 2026-09-06), so every session fact is stated as a capability the agent has and the page names no build, like every other entry. THE DASHBOARD STRINGS are quoted as the modules print them and pinned to them: the two chips and the idle chip (in-use-facts.js SESSION_KIND_NAMES, REMOTE_IDLE_CHIP_LABEL, REMOTE_IDLE_SENTENCE, sshHoldSentence), the cog's SSH line and its two controls (connect-facts.js sshFactLine, SSH_USE_LABEL, SSH_REPLACE_LABEL), the readiness strings (wake-readiness.js). THE ACTIVITY RULE is the agent's contract (PROTOCOL.md, connect.activeSession for the two SSH kinds): active inside ten minutes on a keystroke, CPU in the session's tree, or bytes through a transfer; present-but-idle holds nothing. The vouch sentence keeps the register: the rule's readings were taken on an Ubuntu box of our own, the Mac and Windows halves are proven against a real daemon on the build runners and not yet watched on a desk. The SSH port's exposure verdict is NOT claimed here: the relay half that establishes it is committed and undeployed (ef0c278), and a page must not promise a warning that does not fire. Tools the reader owns may be named (rsync, sshfs, sftp, scp, mosh, tmux, screen, systemd-inhibit); no rival service, no provider. LENGTH: 2,400 to 3,500 words of visible text.", "path": "/sleep-your-linux-box-and-still-ssh-in", "title": "Sleep your Linux box and still SSH in: wake it, work, and let it sleep after — {{brand.name}}", "heading": "Sleep your Linux box and still SSH in: wake it, work, and let it sleep after", "author": "Phil Hodgers", "datePublished": "2026-09-05", "dateModified": "2026-09-09", "byline": "Phil Hodgers · 5 September 2026", "lead": [ "The arrangement you want is a box that sleeps when nothing is happening on it, stays up while an SSH shell or a file transfer is genuinely active, and sleeps again ten minutes after you stop. Search for it and you find the same script a hundred times over: a wrapper that stops the system suspending while an SSH connection exists, because Linux does not count a remote shell as somebody using the machine and suspends under it mid-command. The script works, and brings the opposite problem with it — a box that never sleeps again while a forgotten shell or an sshfs mount sits open, which is the box you were trying not to leave on.", "This page walks through the other arrangement in the order it happens. First you make the box wakeable and choose what will send the wake. Then you wake it, connect over SSH and work; the machine is held awake only while something is happening. Ten minutes after you stop, it goes back to sleep. A nightly backup runs the same loop with no script on either end. The last section covers the seven reasons a wake does nothing, one of them specific to SSH; other versions of the problem are covered in [who uses Wake-on-LAN](/who-uses-wake-on-lan)." ], "sections": [ { "title": "Why a sleeping box drops your SSH session", "body": [ "Suspend stops everything. The kernel freezes every process, the SSH daemon with the rest, and the network card stays powered only to listen for a wake-up packet. A client with a shell open sees the connection hang and time out; a client that connects afterwards finds nothing answering. Two failures, one cause: a machine that is asleep is running nothing.", "The first failure is the one the forums are full of — the box suspended under you. The session manager judges idleness by the local seat, and an SSH shell is a remote login, so the idle timer runs on beneath it as if nobody were there: a build in that shell, an rsync halfway through, an sftp mount in use, none of it counted. The usual fix is `systemd-inhibit` around the daemon, or a script that holds an inhibitor while a connection exists. Both hold on existence, and existence is the wrong test: an sshfs mount exists for a week, a shell you forgot exists until you notice, and the machine stays up for both. The second failure is the one nobody scripts around: you connect and the box is already asleep, because it did what you told it to.", "What changed: the free [agent](/agent) on the box sees an SSH shell and a file transfer over SSH as sessions, judges each by activity rather than existence, holds the machine only while the session is active, and lets it sleep ten minutes after the last thing happened. An idle shell holds nothing. The readings behind the rule were taken on an Ubuntu box of our own; the Mac and Windows halves are proven against a real SSH daemon on our build runners, not yet watched on a desk." ] }, { "title": "Make the box wakeable", "body": [ "Do this at the machine, once. Waking needs nothing installed on the box — the network card does it below the operating system — but the card has to be told to listen, and the machine has to be asleep rather than off." ], "items": [ "**The adapter.** Wake-on-LAN is a flag on the Ethernet port, and on most distributions it resets at every boot. With the free [agent](/agent) on the box, the row shows **wakes may fail** while the flag is off, and **Prepare for wake** in the row's **Wake readiness** section sets it — the answer reads **Network adapter set to wake the machine.** — and re-applies it at every start and every wake, so it holds through reboots; the section then reads **Ready to wake ✓**. By hand it is `ethtool -s eth0 wol g` at every boot; the [compatibility check](/#checker) has the commands.", "**The BIOS.** Wake on LAN on under the board's power page — **Wake on LAN**, **Power On By PCI-E** or **Resume by LAN** — and **ErP Ready**, **EuP 2013** and any deep-sleep mode off, because those cut the standby rail the card listens on. No software reaches this one.", "**Sleep, not power off.** `systemctl suspend`, the desktop's idle timer, or **Sleep** on the dashboard: suspend-to-RAM keeps the card powered and everything in memory, and the box comes back in a second or two with your tmux session where you left it. From full power-off a box listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed; the plug row below is the route from off.", "**The cable.** Ethernet wakes reliably. Wi-Fi wakes rarely, only from sleep, and only when the adapter, its driver and the router's key rotation all cooperate; a laptop on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all." ] }, { "title": "Choose what sends the wake", "body": [ "The packet has to leave from inside the box's own network, so the choice is which always-on thing there does the sending. Four things can, and none of them is the box itself; [how to wake a PC remotely](/wake-a-pc-remotely) walks each one. For the nightly copy below, the NAS that receives it is the natural sender." ], "table": { "hint": "Scroll the table sideways to see every column.", "columns": [ { "id": "cost", "label": "What it costs" }, { "id": "triggers", "label": "What can trigger it" }, { "id": "limit", "label": "The one limit" } ], "rows": [ { "id": "voice", "label": "[An Amazon Echo you already own](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT)", "detail": "Our free, certified [Alexa skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) has the Echo broadcast the packet on your home network — the packet a box on Ethernet listens for.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "\"Alexa, turn on the study PC\", and a tap in the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) from anywhere in the world.", "limit": "Voice and the [Alexa app](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT) only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links on Pro, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below." } }, { "id": "agent", "label": "The free agent on a machine that already stays on", "detail": "A NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box, a mini PC — or a container on any of them. Never the box you want to wake: an agent cannot wake the machine it runs on.", "cells": { "cost": "Nothing", "triggers": "Everything: the dashboard, the phone app, voice and the Claude connector — plus schedules and the API on the paid plans, and wake links on Pro.", "limit": "Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on." } }, { "id": "plug", "label": "A certified smart plug", "detail": "For a machine that starts when power is applied — most desktop boards can be set to. The route from off for a server that was shut down. [The certified models](/certified-power-switches).", "cells": { "cost": "About £10", "triggers": "Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans.", "limit": "The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume." } }, { "id": "dongle", "label": "A dongle you build", "detail": "A Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the network with no always-on machine. The [parts list](/dongle-kit) names them.", "cells": { "cost": "About £17 in parts", "triggers": "Everything the agent carries.", "limit": "A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case." } } ] }, "items": [ "**The Echo.** [Enable the skill](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HDQDJ4LT), link your {{brand.name}} account, and give it the box's name and address; your own Echo puts the packet on your own network, which is why it is free on every plan.", "**The free agent on a box that stays on.** [Install it](/agent) on the NAS, a Raspberry Pi or a Home Assistant box — or [as a container on the NAS](/nas) — and that box sends for every other machine on the network.", "**A certified smart plug.** For the server that is genuinely off, or frozen: it cuts and restores the mains, and a board set to start when power returns boots from cold, on the paid plans.", "**A dongle you build.** A Raspberry Pi Pico W in a printed case, for the network where nothing stays on: half a watt, and everything the agent carries." ] }, { "title": "Wake it, see it come up, connect", "body": [ "With a sender in place the box is a row on your dashboard with a green **Wake** button. Press it from any browser or the phone app and the packet goes out on the box's network a second or two later. Wake-on-LAN has no acknowledgement, so two things tell you it landed: with the free [agent](/agent) on the box the row turns green — **up now — agent connected** — the moment it is up, on every plan; and on Plus and Pro, wake confirmation watches the box's own network for it answering and tells you it came up, or that it did not and why.", "Then connect over SSH, from a terminal or the SSH app on your phone. The agent reports the daemon's posture, so in the machine's settings on the dashboard the Connect section reads **Connect as** with the user name the agent found and **SSH: listening on 22** beside it — or the port the box's `sshd_config` moved it to — with the link built from those facts, `ssh://phil@192.0.2.20`, and **Use this**. Press it, press **Save**, and the row carries a **Remote Desktop** button that opens the link in whatever handles `ssh://` on the device in your hand — one label for every scheme. Pressed while the box is asleep it sends the wake, waits for the agent to say the machine is up, and opens the link as one press; on Plus and Pro it holds the box for ten minutes while you sign in. The suggested address is the box's own network's — edit it to the mesh address before **Save** if that is how you reach it — and a row that already has a link is offered **Replace with this**." ], "media": { "src": "/media/wake-row.8a5654b8.png", "width": 949, "height": 236, "alt": "A machine row on the dashboard reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now', a power chip showing 0 W, the phrase to say to the voice assistant, and a green Wake button.", "caption": "A real row before the wake: this machine is off at its plug, so the green **Wake** is the plug's — the same button, whichever route the box needs." } }, { "title": "While you are connected: the row says in use — SSH", "body": [ "The row reads **in use — SSH** while you are working in a shell over SSH, and **in use — rsync over SSH** — or sftp, scp or git, whichever program is moving the bytes; an sshfs mount is sftp underneath — while a copy is running; a transfer program it has no name for reads **in use — file transfer over SSH**. The chip means the agent is holding the box; tap it and the note reads **Somebody is working on this machine over SSH; it stays awake while they are active and sleeps ten minutes after they stop.**", "The rule is activity, not existence, and it is what makes an overnight shell and an sshfs mount safe. A session counts as active when it has shown activity inside the last ten minutes: a keystroke on its terminal, CPU time in its process tree, or bytes moving through a transfer. A build running in a shell you are not typing into counts — the work is work whether or not you are watching it. A shell sitting at its prompt does not: ten minutes after the last keystroke the row swaps the chip for **SSH session idle**, whose note says what will happen — **Somebody is connected over SSH but has been idle for more than ten minutes, so the machine may go to sleep under them.** Nothing is killed, and the box is free to sleep as its own settings and the meter's end decide. Type something and the hold is back at once; `mosh`, `tmux` and `screen` are your own tools for picking a session up after the next wake. Sleeping it yourself is **Sleep** on the row — ten sleeps a calendar month on the free plan, unmetered on [Plus and Pro](/#pricing) — and **Keep awake…**, on Plus and Pro, holds the box for a window you choose whatever the session is doing." ], "media": { "src": "/media/up-now-row.d2bcc050.png", "width": 949, "height": 235, "alt": "A machine row reading 'up now — agent connected — held awake until 12:18', with Remote AI and Remote Desktop buttons and, below, the Sleep button beside the hold, restart and shutdown controls.", "caption": "The row after a wake, with the free agent on the machine: **up now — agent connected**, the **Remote Desktop** button that opens the stored link, and the power controls beneath it." } }, { "title": "The nightly copy: wake, transfer, sleep, with no script on either end", "body": [ "The loop most homelab scripts exist for: a backup box asleep all day, up for the copy, asleep again after. On the paid plans a **schedule** wakes the box at the hour you choose, with retries and a record, and every resume opens with ten minutes of grace, so the copy has ten minutes to start before the meter's end can act. Start the rsync from the other end — the cron line on the NAS you already have — and the row reads **in use — rsync over SSH** while the bytes move: the box is held for as long as they do, four minutes or four hours, and a pause while rsync checksums a large file sits inside the ten-minute window.", "When the last byte lands the agent holds the box for ten more minutes, and then the meter's end does what it does at the end of any hold. A box on a cable goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it — on Windows, macOS and Linux. A box on a certified smart plug, on the paid plans, shuts down cleanly instead, because it comes back by cold boot rather than resume, and the switch stays on for the next **Wake** to cycle it. A Wi-Fi-only box with no plug is left to its own power settings, because nothing could wake it again. Nothing on the box scheduled the sleep, and nothing on the NAS sent one.", "An sshfs mount, or an sftp session left open, gets the same rule and the opposite result: while it moves data it holds the box, and while it sits there it holds nothing, so a mount left up overnight does not keep the server out of sleep. [Wake-on-LAN for a homelab](/wake-on-lan-homelab-nas) has the arithmetic for the always-on side." ], "media": { "src": "/media/plug-off-row.fd220635.png", "width": 949, "height": 507, "alt": "A machine row reading 'off — drawing nothing at the switch, as of just now' with its power popover open: 'feed on, drawing nothing — the machine is off, or unplugged from the switch as of 5 d ago', 'hard recovery verified', the label WALL POWER, and a green Wake button below.", "caption": "A plug-powered box after a clean shutdown at the meter's end: the switch stays on, drawing nothing, and the row's **Wake** boots it again for the next copy." } }, { "title": "When the wake does nothing", "body": [ "Nearly every \"it does not wake\" is one of these seven, each with a check at the desk. The first six are the plain how-to's causes — the Windows ones for the PC on the same desk, the network ones for any box — and the seventh is SSH's own." ], "ordered": true, "items": [ "**The adapter setting is off.** Check Device Manager, the Ethernet adapter: **Allow this device to wake the computer** ticked under *Power Management*, **Wake on Magic Packet** Enabled under *Advanced*. A driver update can silently reset both; with the free agent on the machine, the dashboard's **Wake readiness** section catches it and offers the fix.", "**Fast startup is on, and you shut down.** The machine is hibernated, not off, and the card is parked un-armed. Check *Choose what the power buttons do*: **Turn on fast startup** unticked. Or sleep the machine instead — sleep is the state the packet is best at.", "**The machine was off, not asleep.** From full power-off a PC listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed and the driver's after-shutdown wake is on; a Mac never listens. Check: sleep it, send the wake, and if that works the missing setting is the BIOS one.", "**It is on Wi-Fi.** Check whether the cable is in. Waking over Wi-Fi works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop.", "**Wrong network.** A broadcast does not cross a VLAN, a guest Wi-Fi, a client-isolated network or, on some mesh systems, a different node. Check that the sender and the machine share a segment — same switch, off the guest network.", "**A BIOS power setting.** ErP Ready, EuP 2013, deep sleep, or a mode that cuts the standby rail. Check the BIOS's power page with all of those off and Wake on LAN on — and take the right address: `getmac /v`, the **Ethernet** row, never a virtual adapter's.", "**The box woke and you could not get in, or it went back to sleep under you.** Check the machine's settings on the dashboard: the Connect section reads **SSH: listening on 22**, or names the port `sshd_config` moved it to. A box whose daemon is not up says so and names the press — **SSH: the SSH server is installed but not running. Start the sshd service and this row offers SSH….** — and one with nothing installed reads **SSH: no SSH server found. Install openssh-server and this row offers SSH….**; enable the service at boot while you are there, and remember that a firewall open to the local network and not to your mesh locks you out with the daemon running. Either way the row has a **Set up SSH** button that hands the whole job to the agent: open this page on the computer you will connect from, enter a code from your authenticator app, and press **Set up SSH** — the box’s own agent installs the login service, starts it, opens the machine’s own firewall for it, adds the key that computer made and turns password sign-in off. Two-factor sign-in has to be on for your account: the press hands out a shell. Then check the chip: **SSH session idle** means the session showed nothing for ten minutes and the meter's end was free to act — start the job before you walk away, or hold the box with **Keep awake…** on Plus and Pro." ] } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Does my SSH session keep the machine awake?", "a": "While it is active, yes. The free [agent](/agent) on the box holds the machine while a shell over SSH shows activity — a keystroke, CPU time in its process tree, bytes moving — and shows **in use — SSH** on the row. Ten minutes after the last activity the hold ends, the row reads **SSH session idle**, and the machine may sleep; nothing is killed, and typing brings the hold straight back. An inhibitor script holds for as long as the connection exists, which is why it keeps the box up for a shell you forgot." }, { "q": "Will it sleep during a long rsync?", "a": "No. An rsync over SSH reads **in use — rsync over SSH**: the box is held while bytes move, four minutes or four hours, and a pause while rsync checksums a large file sits inside the ten-minute window. Ten minutes after the last byte the meter's end acts — sleep on a cable, a clean shutdown on a plug. Only a trickle can read as idle: under about ten kilobytes a second for ten minutes, which no backup over a home network is." }, { "q": "What if I leave a shell open overnight?", "a": "Nothing, by design. A shell at its prompt shows no activity, so ten minutes after your last keystroke the row swaps **in use — SSH** for **SSH session idle** and the box is free to sleep as its own settings and the meter's end decide. The shell is not killed: the box suspends with it in memory, the connection times out on your side, and after the next wake you connect again — `tmux`, `screen` or `mosh` make that a resume rather than a restart. A build left running in it is activity, so the box stays up until it finishes and for ten minutes after." }, { "q": "Does this work with sshfs or an SFTP mount?", "a": "Yes, in both directions. While the mount moves data the agent shows **in use — sftp over SSH** and holds the box; while it sits there it holds nothing, so an sshfs mount left up for a week — the case that kept servers out of sleep under the old scripts — reads as idle after ten minutes like any quiet session. After the box sleeps the mount goes stale on the client: mount it again after the next wake, or use your client's reconnect option. The same holds for an sftp session left open in a file manager." }, { "q": "Can I schedule the wake for a backup?", "a": "Yes, on the paid plans: a **schedule** wakes the box at the hour you choose, with retries and a record, and every resume opens with ten minutes of grace so the copy has time to start. Run the copy from the NAS that receives it and the transfer holds the box for as long as it takes; ten minutes after the last byte the meter's end puts the box back — to sleep on a cable, or a clean shutdown on a certified plug with the switch left on for the next **Wake**. The API on the paid plans, a **wake link** on Pro and a Claude chat trigger the same wake, and nothing runs on the box to arrange any of it." }, { "q": "Does this work on a Mac or a Windows machine with OpenSSH Server?", "a": "Yes, on all three. On a Mac the agent comes as the installer package and the session rule is the same, with the Mac's own wake facts on top: a Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off; **Wake for network access** has to be on, which **Prepare for wake**, in the row's **Wake readiness** section, does for you; a MacBook on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all; and an Apple-silicon Mac mini or Mac Studio starts when power is applied, so a certified plug on the paid plans is its route from off — [how to wake a Mac remotely](/wake-a-mac-remotely) is the Mac's page. On Windows the machine runs the OpenSSH Server optional feature, the agent reads the daemon's process tree, and the same chips apply. The Linux box is the one we have watched ourselves; the Mac and Windows halves are proven against a real SSH daemon on our build runners, not yet on a desk of our own." }, { "q": "Do I have to paste a public key?", "a": "No. Open this page on the computer you will connect from and press **Set up SSH** on the row: that computer makes its own key, the private half is made there and never leaves it, and only the public half goes on the box. The card then shows **Connect with** and the exact line to type; leave **Let me connect by typing ssh backup-box** ticked and that line is `ssh backup-box`, because the machine you type at adds one block to its own SSH config file carrying the address, the user, the port and the key. Connecting from something that cannot run the agent — an iPad, a phone, a work laptop — is **Use a key I already have** on the same card, which takes the public half your own SSH app holds; on a phone or tablet the card leads with that route and nothing else, because a key made on another computer belongs to that computer. A box whose SSH server is already running shows **SSH…** on the row instead, and that card carries **Authorise this computer** — or **Authorise a key** where the dashboard does not know which computer it is open on — which opens the same choice. Afterwards **Keys authorised on this machine**, on the same card, lists what the box lets in and carries a **Remove** beside each one. A key made by the dashboard is removed from both machines: the box stops accepting it, and the machine that made it deletes its copy when it next connects. A pasted key comes off the box alone. You are emailed whenever a key is added or taken away — that message cannot be switched off." }, { "q": "What happens to password sign-in, and how do I put it back?", "a": "Setting SSH up switches password sign-in off on the box, and that stays the rule: the key becomes the way in, which is the point — a password on an SSH server is what the scanners spend all night guessing at. The card says so before you press, and where the agent can read the daemon it says which case you are in rather than leaving it conditional: **Password sign-in is on for this machine now, and this press turns it off.** To put it back, the box’s **SSH…** card and the machine’s settings both carry **Turn password sign-in back on**; it asks for a code from your authenticator app, restores the setting that was there before and changes nothing else. It is offered only where we were the ones who switched password sign-in off — a box you made keys-only yourself reads **Sign-in is keys only.** and carries no button. **Turn password sign-in off** takes it away again." } ], "faqTitle": "Questions people ask before letting the server sleep", "ctaTitle": "Where to go next", "ctas": [ { "label": "Check your box can be woken at all", "href": "/#checker" }, { "label": "Install the free agent", "href": "/agent" }, { "label": "Compare the plans", "href": "/#pricing" } ] } } }