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A Flutter plugin for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connections.

Features:

  • Dart APIs to open and manage RDP sessions.
  • Native macOS platform view widget to render the remote desktop in Flutter.
  • Input forwarding for keyboard, mouse, and touchpad events.
  • Bidirectional clipboard support.
  • GDI and GFX rendering backends support.

demo

‼️ Development status (Early Stage) ‼️

This project is early-stage / experimental.

  • API changes can be breaking, even in minor updates.
  • Method-channel contract details may evolve while the plugin matures.
  • Current production readiness should be evaluated carefully per use case.

If you adopt frdp now, pin a specific commit or version and test upgrades before rollout.

Platform support

macOS Windows Linux iOS Android Web
supported ✅ planned 🗓️ planned 🗓️ not planned ❌ not planned ❌ not planned ❌

Installation

Add the dependency to your pubspec.yaml.

From pub.dev

dependencies:
    frdp: ^0.1.0

From GitHub

dependencies:
    frdp:
        git:
            url: https://github.com/riccardo-tralli/frdp.git
            ref: main

From local

dependencies:
    frdp:
        path: ../frdp

Then run:

flutter pub get

Get started

Import the package:

import "package:frdp/frdp.dart";

Create a plugin instance and connect:

final frdp = const Frdp();

final session = await frdp.connect(
  const FrdpConnectionConfig(
    host: "192.168.1.1",
    port: 3389, // optional, default 3389
    username: "rdp-user",
    password: "rdp-password",
    domain: "WORKGROUP", // optional
    ignoreCertificate: true, // optional, default false
    enableClipboard: true, // optional, default true
    disableClipboardPerformanceFallback: false, // optional, default false
    renderingBackend: FrdpRenderingBackend.gdi, // optional, default gdi
    performanceProfile: FrdpPerformanceProfile.medium, // optional, default medium
    connectTimeoutMs: 15000, // optional
  ),
);

Use a custom profile when you need fine-grained control over FreeRDP settings:

final session = await frdp.connect(
  const FrdpConnectionConfig(
    host: "192.168.1.1",
    username: "rdp-user",
    password: "rdp-password",
    renderingBackend: FrdpRenderingBackend.gfx,
    performanceProfile: FrdpPerformanceProfile.custom,
    customPerformanceProfile: FrdpCustomPerformanceProfile(
      desktopWidth: 1920,
      desktopHeight: 1080,
      connectionType: FrdpConnectionType.lan,
      colorDepth: 32,
      disableWallpaper: false,
      allowFontSmoothing: true,
      gfxH264: true,
      gfxAvc444: true,
    ),
  ),
);

Render the remote desktop in your widget tree:

FrdpView(sessionId: session.id)

Disconnect when done:

await frdp.disconnect(session.id);

FreeRDP Library

The plugin builds and caches FreeRDP from source automatically. FreeRDP is expected to be provided through this embedded bootstrap flow rather than through a preinstalled package manager copy.

Default behavior:

  • During pod install / first macOS build, macos/scripts/ensure_embedded_freerdp.sh clones FreeRDP from the official repo and builds static libraries.
  • Build artifacts are cached in macos/.freerdp/install and reused on subsequent builds.
  • Dependencies are also built and cached in macos/.freerdp/deps/install by default.
  • The embedded build disables standalone FreeRDP desktop clients such as SDL/X11, WinPR helper executables, and optional media codec stacks like Opus/FFmpeg, keeping only the libraries/channels needed by the plugin.

Build prerequisites:

  • git
  • cmake
  • ninja (optional, for faster builds)
  • curl, perl, make (required to build embedded OpenSSL)

Useful environment variables:

# Pin to a specific upstream ref/tag/branch
export FREERDP_GIT_REF=3.24.2

# Change repo (fork/mirror)
export FREERDP_GIT_URL=https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP.git

# Architecture to build into the static libraries
export FREERDP_ARCH="arm64"

# macOS deployment target for the embedded static libraries and pod target
export FRDP_MACOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.15

# Embedded OpenSSL version
export OPENSSL_VERSION=3.3.2

# Embedded jansson source/ref
export JANSSON_GIT_URL=https://github.com/akheron/jansson.git
export JANSSON_GIT_REF=v2.14

Public API overview

Main exports:

  • Frdp: API client (connect, disconnect, state checks, input forwarding)
  • FrdpConnectionConfig: connection settings and validation
  • FrdpSession: session identifier and current state
  • FrdpConnectionState: disconnected, connecting, connected, error
  • FrdpRenderingBackend: rendering backend (gdi, gfx)
  • FrdpPerformanceProfile: preset profile for connection quality/performance trade-offs
  • FrdpCustomPerformanceProfile: fine-grained FreeRDP display/performance settings
  • FrdpConnectionType: link-type hint used by custom profile
  • FrdpClipboard: utility for clipboard events and remote clipboard writes
  • FrdpView: RDP rendering widget

Input forwarding

frdp forwards:

  • Pointer events (x, y, buttons bitmask)
  • Key events (keyCode, isDown)

The pointer buttons bitmask follows Flutter conventions:

  • 1: left button
  • 2: right button
  • 4: middle button
  • 8: back button
  • 16: forward button

Method-Channel Contract Tool

The plugin uses a generated channel contract to keep Dart and native implementations aligned.

  • Source of truth: tool/channel_contract.json
  • Generated Dart file: lib/src/channel/frdp_channel_contract.dart
  • Generated macOS file: macos/Classes/plugin/FrdpChannelContract.swift
  • Generator: tool/generate_channel_contracts.dart

Maintenance

Do not edit files manually. Update tool/channel_contract.json and regenerate contract files:

dart tool/generate_channel_contracts.dart

Example app

A working example app is available in example.

Run it with:

cd example
flutter pub get
flutter run -d macos

License

frdp is distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.

Libraries

frdp
widgets/frdp_view