Remote desktop, but the PC is asleep: wake it first, from anywhere
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.
Why the session fails: a sleeping PC is running nothing
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 is the any-machine version of it.
Make the PC wakeable before you leave
Four settings account for almost every failure, in this order because each can hide the next. With the free 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 gives the click-path for doing it by hand.
- 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.
Choose what sends the wake
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, a NAS or a half-watt dongle. Four things can, and any one is enough. How to wake a PC remotely walks each one.
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
| Choose what sends the wake | What it costs | What can trigger it | The one limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| An Amazon Echo you already ownOur free, certified Alexa skill 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. | Nothing | "Alexa, turn on the study PC", and a tap in the Alexa app from anywhere in the world. | Voice and the Alexa app only. The dashboard, the phone app, schedules, wake links on Pro, the API and the Claude connector all need one of the rows below. |
| The free agent on a machine that already stays onA 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. | Nothing | 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. | Needs a machine that stays on. An agent cannot wake the machine it runs on. |
| A certified smart plugFor 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. | About £10 | Power on and power cycle from the dashboard, through an agent or dongle that reaches the plug — on the paid plans. | The machine must start when power returns: a cold boot, not a resume. |
| A dongle you buildA Raspberry Pi Pico W and a few parts, for the network with no always-on machine. The parts list names them. | About £17 in parts | Everything the agent carries. | A small build: flash it from your browser, print or buy a case. |
- The Echo. Enable the skill, link your Rooster Wake 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, which is why it is free on every plan.
- The free agent on a box that stays on. Install it on a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box or a second PC — or as a container on the 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.
Wake it first, then connect
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 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 before you travel: a remote session wants the account password.
While you are connected: the row says in use
With the free 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.
When you disconnect: back to sleep, nothing left listening
Waking needs nothing on the PC; sleeping does, because something has to ask Windows to suspend. That is the free 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.
Is your Remote Desktop port exposed?
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 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 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 covers the mechanics.
If the machine is a Mac, or a laptop
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 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 covers the office-side checks; other shapes of the problem are mapped in who uses Wake-on-LAN.
When the wake does nothing
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.
- 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.