Remote Desktop Mobile Ratings and Reviews

Taking WAAYYYY too long to support external monitor full screen

The developer betas for ipad OS 16 were released almost a year ago now! Meaning they’ve have a year to implement full screen support for stage manager external monitor. In a Remote Desktop app this is a necessary feature and I have a hard time understand what the excuse could be that this hasn’t been updated for this critical feature yet. UPDATE: I’m so confused. The latest updated as of 9.5.23 says “the update you’ve all been waiting for!” And lists as a feature “the ability to display on an external monitor”. WHAT? We were always able to display the session on an external monitor. The issue is compatibility with stage manager and being able to resize the window and utilize full screen via stage manager on external monitor. And it still doesn’t work. I have no idea what they are talking about! UPDATE: Devs have fixed external monitor support for iPads using Stage Manager. I can now utilize full screen RDP on external monitor with stage manager. In my opinion, took way too long, but better late than never. Well done on listening to user feedback. I have updated my rating accordingly.

Useful app but please help with keyboard issue and split screen!

Update, First of all, the Dev feedback so quickly is much appreciated. Even more so is that the issue has already been resolved before the major update coming in December! The RD app no longer takes over all keyboard inputs when using slide over, works just as it should. Thank you very much for the quick resolve to this that helps my workflow go more smoothly! -Brad I’ve got an IPad Pro with attached magic keyboard. I use this app to run a virtual PC for a program for work. With my RD app open, if I have slide over open to type down notes for example, the RD app takes control of the keyboard inputs after about 3 seconds. It used to do this only if I clicked the little keyboard symbol at the top of the RD app but now its each time. I’ve uninstalled and re configured my virtual pc’s but it remained. There have been 2 RD app updates since I’ve noticed it and it keeps occurring. This is very frustrating for some of the tasks I have to complete on this, almost requires me to buy a laptop to be able to actually multitask like I used to a month or so ago. Also, this is more of a wish but please try to configure the app to support true split screen and not just slide over! It would be very helpful if this app could resize the way other apps do but RD app will not resize, stays full screen and says its not supported. Thanks for the useful app!

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your feedback. This issue will be fixed in version 10.4.0 tentatively in December.

Good RDP Client but not Great

This app works about 90% of the time and the two main issues that I have are due to the size of the RDP client window on an extra monitor and the option to reduce background login attempts.

1. The size of the RDP client window is great on the iPad and works well and is the full size of the iPad window. But once you connect the iPad to an extra monitor(Dell U2415 in my case) the RDP window will not fill up the entire monitor screen. There is a significant gap around the RDP window on the extra monitor. This is not a typical with apps on the extra monitor because there are three dots in the top center of the app that usually allows for the app to go full screen and then the app will fill up the entire window. This option is usually an option on most apps but is not an option on this app. This is a big deal when you are trying to use the extra monitor to work off of and have a monitor that is more than 1-2’ away from your eyes. Once this is fixed this app will be much more beneficial.

2. The option to reduce background login attempts is a necessary option because currently this app will attempt logins until either the computer is locked out or the security login software locks out. Both of which are a nuisance next time you attempt to login. Needs to determine options to resolve this issue to prevent nuisance login attempts and reduce false locks out of the remote computer.

Excellent RDP Client, But Not Perfect

This RDP client is excellent. Very smooth and intuitive! Performance and graphics is pretty great. I give it 4-stars because there are two issues that kind of bother me.

Issue #1: Once connected to the session, you can’t hide the tool bar at the top. In older versions, you were able to hide it, and it would simply have a small-transparent pulldown to select the keyboard. Now, it cannot be hidden and instead can just slide left or right. If you have a browser open with multiple tabs, the toolbar is big enough to cover one of the tabs.

Issue #2: If you’re connected to a session, and you switch apps on the iPhone, when you jump back to Remote Desktop, sometimes the display is messed up. The session will only show half of the screen, or the remote images will tear and essentially won’t refresh and stay partially stuck on the previous image. The only way to correct it is to disconnect from the session and reconnect.

Surprisingly smooth and well thought out

Microsoft hasn’t been known in the past for smoothly interoperating with products from other software companies, but their Remote Desktop clients are an exception. Connections are smooth even over LTE and most of the Windows client features and options are available.

There are two input methods: a simple tap-based method which works well for UWP apps, and a cursor-based method that more or less uses your phone screen as a trackpad. The input method can be switched with two taps, and the keyboard can be shown with one tap.

The only thing I would like to see is a way to access certain keyboard keys that aren’t present on iOS, such as arrow keys. You can open the On-screen Keyboard in Windows, but a virtual keyboard being clicked by a virtual mouse being controlled by a touchscreen becomes pretty laborious to get anything done with.

FINALLY GOT AN UPDATE

Still no 3D Touch. Taptic touch shouldn’t replace it on iPhone X and below.

Developer response: I understand your reasoning but it’s still false to say force touch has been “replaced” on iPhone X, as it still works to use force touch to do all those things you mentioned, with press + hold as an alternative method. It is quicker and less error-prone for users to do a force touch to right-click rather than hold and wait, which is less intuitive and not as efficient. There’s also no haptic feedback so it just doesn’t feel right.

Update 3: crashes fixed! But force touch removed?? I see a response that says iOS13 removed force touch but that is false.. it is still supported on iPhone X and right-click was much better with it.

Update 2: still crashes twice upon opening..

Update: taking off a star because it crashes a lot now

After years of waiting we got the update we were waiting for, and it’s a big one! The app is overall much improved and even supports dark mode.

When connected, the display still does not fill the full display of iPhone X with no option to change that. It does use a larger portion of the screen than before though. Overall great update and looking forward to future improvements!

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the feedback. We appreciate it. On an iPhone X running iOS 13 or later force touch has been replaced for most operations (for example press-and-hold on the home screen to open app menus, press-and-hold in Photos to show a preview, press-and-hold in Mail to see a preview, etc). We have chosen to follow Apple's lead in this respect and consolidate with a set of consistent gestures that work across all device form factors. In addition, the underlying gesture recognition code we use is cross-platform and shared with other platforms (Android and Windows) and apps, so it helps from a test, maintenance and feature development perspective to have code be as unified (and simple) as possible.

Used to work great, new keyboard ruined it

The new keyboard they added ruined this app - it’s buggy and unreliable. Often cropped and zoomed in which makes it not only useless, but you can’t dismiss it, so it blocks your screen. You can still manually open the Apple Keyboard, which works perfectly, but the new buggy keyboard opens automatically when you tap any text field and it’s infuriating. Also, while the Apple keyboard used to open automatically, now you have to manually open it, the screen scroll control stays on after you dismiss the Apple keyboard and the automatic screen adjustment when a keyboard comes up is buggy and sometimes leaves a huge black blank area at the top.

This new two keyboard design is terrible, buggy, confusing, obnoxious and was not ready to be released. I wish there was a way to revert to the old version. I loved this app before, but now it actually makes it easier to actually just physically go to my PC instead.

Getting close

I’ve been using an iPad to remote into a windows desktop for years and I’ve seen this app (and others) mature to something that is getting very close to the desktop experience. Four stars for how far this has come. However, like most of the M.S. apps, they often take a very long time to adopt new features provided by OS updates, which is a bit of a shame. One missing feature that you find on desktop Remote Desktop Clents is Smart Card redirection. This is not available on Remote Desktop for iOS however, and is a deal breaker in some situations. You cannot log into a windows machine that requires smart cards even though CryptoTokenKit has existed since iPad OS 16.1 would love to see this added for managed machines that require this level of security.

Need to update

I like the simplicity of this Remote Desktop program from Microsoft which does not require to install additional software on the server site. For occasional use, it is sufficient although the features are not as rich as some other program I have used before, including Logmein. I need to access to office desktops with central administration not allowing individuals to install network-traffic programs, so RDP satisfies the requirement. However, keyboard (apple magic keyboard or smarter keyboard) both do not work properly under iPadOS 15.4 RC. In particular, the space key and arrow keys are not working ( space can be inserted by option+space though discovered after random search). Please hurry up and update the app! Overall, it works well enough!

Gets better with every update but still no Touch ID

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client for iPad has always been a solid (and free) app that made it easy to connect to windows machines.

The App had some issues in the beginning but with every update Microsoft has really improved the App and added some neat features. The App is so good now it works nearly flawlessly. The latest release has a great new my Desktop page, and is very responsive to inputs.

I would give the app five stars if it weren't for the lack of Touch ID security (it’s very surprising and annoying that this app doesn’t have any security feature to launch it). It’s also limited to Windows machines. Adding Touch ID and the ability to remotely connect to Macs on my network would make this the best Remote Desktop app on the market.