There are various professional first-party, third-party, open source, and freeware remote desktop applications, some of which are cross-platform across various versions of Windows, Mac OS X, UNIX, and Linux. This is widely used by many computer manufacturers and large businesses’ help desks for technical troubleshooting of their customers’ problems.

Remote access can also be explained as remote control of a computer by using another device connected via the internet or another network. The term remote desktop refers to a software or operating system feature that allows a personal computer’s desktop environment to be run remotely on one system, but the concept applies equally to a server.