How to wake a PC remotely, and put it back to sleep after

What waking a PC remotely actually needs

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 covers the mechanics, and the exposed Remote Desktop check 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.

Step 1 — make the PC wakeable (Windows)

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 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Step 2 — choose what sends the packet

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.

• The Echo. Enable the skill, link your Rooster Wake 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 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: 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.

Step 3 — send it from anywhere

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 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 covers the rest of that door.

The Echo carries voice and the Alexa app 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.

Step 4 — know it woke, then connect

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 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 before you are somewhere else with a laptop.

Step 5 — put it back to sleep

Waking needs nothing on the PC; sleeping does, because something has to ask the operating system to suspend. That is the free 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.

Macs and laptops, plainly

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 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. How to wake a Mac remotely is the Mac's own page.

Troubleshooting — the six usual causes

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

How this compares with the other ways to do it

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 maps the six common ones and points at the guide for each.