On Pi OS Bookworm, I used Raspberry Pi Imager v2.0.1 to flash Pi OS Trixie 64-bit with desktop to a 32GB A1 SD card, configured a hostname, username, password, and raspberry pi connect authentication up front. It's the first time I've used this feature, and during the flashing process it all went smoothly.
However, after booting this SD card on my headless Pi 4 and waiting a few minutes, Raspberry Pi Connect only succeeds in Remote Shell mode. Trying to connect with a remote desktop connection fails with this error:I'm not sure why it does not exist, as labwc is running.Any ideas? It seems this is not a common issue, though as this is a completely fresh OS image without any customizations I'm not sure what could be unique in my situation to cause this. Perhaps the number of people preauthenticating rpi-connect in imager for headless usage is not high? I doubt it.
However, after booting this SD card on my headless Pi 4 and waiting a few minutes, Raspberry Pi Connect only succeeds in Remote Shell mode. Trying to connect with a remote desktop connection fails with this error:
So far I have tried:Failed to connect to screen sharing server
Please check it’s running and try reconnecting
- Full apt update and upgrade
- Ensuring that wayland labwc was set in raspi-config (it already was)
- Forcing a physical display with a set screen resolution in config.txt with:
Code:
hdmi_group=1hdmi_mode=16hdmi_force_hotplug=1 - Turning off and on the screen-connect feature as suggested here
Code:
pi@pi-trixie:~ $ rpi-connect vnc off✓ Screen sharing disallowedpi@pi-trixie:~ $ rpi-connect vnc on✓ Screen sharing allowed - rpi-connect doctor predictably warns about XDG_SESSION_TYPE and WAYLAND_DISPLAY being unset in the connect ssh session, although labwc and rpi-connectd seems to be running, so to me that means that in the desktop session these variables are set correctly.
Code:
pi@pi-trixie:~ $ rpi-connect doctorScreen sharing is supported by this version of rpi-connect✗ Wayland compositor available - Screen sharing is unavailable unless an active, supported Wayland desktop session is found for your user✓ Communication with Raspberry Pi Connect WebSocket server✓ Communication with Raspberry Pi Connect API✓ Authentication with Raspberry Pi Connect API✓ Peer-to-peer connection candidate via STUN✓ Peer-to-peer connection candidate via TURN✗ Some checks failed - Trying to restart the service seems to fail too.
Code:
pi@pi-trixie:~ $ systemctl --user restart rpi-connect-wayvncJob for rpi-connect-wayvnc.service failed because the control process exited with error code.See "systemctl --user status rpi-connect-wayvnc.service" and "journalctl --user -xeu rpi-connect-wayvnc.service" for details.pi@pi-trixie:~ $ systemctl --user status rpi-connect-wayvnc.service● rpi-connect-wayvnc.service - WayVNC process used by Raspberry Pi Connect Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/rpi-connect-wayvnc.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2026-02-02 17:29:25 CST; 1s ago Invocation: e8718486d1cc42818c6d326916aa600d Process: 3040 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/test -S /run/user/1000/wayland-0 -o -S /run/user/1000/wayland-1 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE) Process: 3042 ExecStopPost=/usr/bin/rm -f /run/user/1000/rpi-connect-wayvnc-ctl.sock /run/user/1000/rpi-connect-wayvnc.sock (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) CPU: 73msFeb 02 17:29:25 pi-trixie systemd[925]: Failed to start rpi-connect-wayvnc.service - WayVNC process used by Raspberry Pi Connect.
Code:
pi@pi-trixie:~ $ ls /run/user/1000/bus dbus-1 gcr gnupg keyring openssh_agent pipewire-0 pipewire-0.lock pipewire-0-manager pipewire-0-manager.lock pk-debconf-socket pulse rpi-connectd.socket systemdCode:
pi@pi-trixie:~ $ ps aux | grep -i 'way\|labwc'pi 951 0.6 0.2 1240164 20220 ? Ssl 17:15 0:08 /usr/bin/rpi-connectd -socket /run/user/1000/rpi-connect-wayvnc.sockrpi-fir+ 1081 0.0 1.2 502228 103704 ? Ssl 17:15 0:00 /usr/bin/labwc -mrpi-fir+ 1140 0.0 0.0 10100 1920 ? Ss 17:15 0:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/labwc-piStatistics: Posted by Botspot — Mon Feb 02, 2026 11:35 pm