How to wake your work PC from home, and reach it safely
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.
The arrangement most people end up with, and why it is the risky one
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 — the free agent reports whether your machine's Remote Desktop port is answering from the public internet, on every plan including the free one.
The shape that is both safer and cheaper
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 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 is the plain walkthrough of that loop for any machine, senders and troubleshooting included.
Setting it up
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 has it broadcast the packet, by voice or a tap in the Alexa app, and by nothing else; the free 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, 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 walks each one.
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
| Setting it up | 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 — an Echo at home reaches a home office; one on the office network reaches the office PC. | 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 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. | 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, or whose BIOS is not yours to open. 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. |
- 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 produces the exact click-path for your operating system, and with the free 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 on an Echo you own, install the 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.
The sign-in trap: you may not know your own password
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.
Rooster Wake surfaces this on the machine's own card when the 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.
Waking it before you need it, and knowing that it worked
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 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.
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 — 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.
- 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 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.
If the office PC is a Mac
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 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 maps the six common ones and points at the guide for each.