Any and all advice, guides, and reviews are unbiased and based on my personal experience. If you buy through affiliate links, I may earn commissions, which helps support my website. This does not have an impact on posts or my opinion of any reviewed products. If you find this post helpful and want to say thanks, please buy me a coffee or take a look at my book on Amazon. It keeps this page ad-free. Thank you!
If you’re running a Raspberry Pi on Bookworm, you may be greeted by the message “Cannot currently show the desktop” error when you try and connect to your Raspberry Pi over VNC.
This was super frustrating for me, because I run my Raspberry Pi headless and rely on VNC for remote access. While there are a lot of guides that will tell you to adjust the resolution, HDMI, or other settings – those guides seem to be written for older versions of PiOS. I have also found that Tiger VNC does not work and is not a solution.
The fix for “Cannot currently show the desktop” on VNC for Raspberry Pi Bookworm that I have found to work is easy. Just follow these steps:
How to Fix Cannot currently show the desktop on RealVNC and Raspberry Pi
Disclaimer: I can’t promise this will work for you. It works for me. I personally have now given up on RealVNC. This solution was current as of May 2024, updates to the Raspberry Pi OS, VNC, or other systems may result in this not working for you or breaking your Pi install. I do not take responsibility for what happens – unless of course it works for you too!
- Login to your Raspberry Pi and start the Terminal (obviously you’ll be using an external monitor for this.
- Run this command.
sudo raspi-config
- Select 6, Advanced Options
- Select A7, Wayland (Switch between X and Wayland backends)
- Select W1, X11 Openbox window manager with X11 backend
- Select 2, Display Options.
- Select D3, VNC Resolution
- Select the Resolution best for you (I recommend starting at 1024×768 and working up from there as appropriate).
- Select Back, Select Finish.
- Follow the prompts to reboot your Raspberry Pi.
- You’re done!
If you try VNC, it should now work. The side effect is it stops Raspberry Pi Connect, the free web based remote access system from working. So really only do this if you need, prefer, or must use VNC.
If you want to reverse this change, simply follow steps 1-4 but then select W2, Wayfire at step 5 and follow the rest of the steps.
Why is there this bug on Raspberry Pi bookworm and VNC? Raspberry Pi moved to a default Wayland environment on Debian (Bookworm). RealVNC doesn’t support this and claims this will be “fixed” in late 2024, until then, this is the best workaround.
Alternatives to RealVNC on Raspberry Pi
With RealVNC moving to a subscription model (although there is a free hidden lite plan) relying on VNC may not be in your best short and long term financial interests. If you can (you need to own a Raspberry Pi 5, Raspberry Pi 4, or Raspberry Pi 400, I have a Raspberry Pi 4), I really recommend using Raspberry Pi Connect. It’s free and you can remote access via the web rather than needing a VNC client.
You can read about Raspberry Pi connect on the official Raspberry Pi website here, but to install it just login to your Raspberry Pi, start terminal and execute this command.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade sudo apt install rpi-connect
Then reboot your Raspberry Pi and go to the Raspberry Pi connect website.
Hope this helps someone
Any and all advice, guides, and reviews are unbiased and based on my personal experience. If you buy through affiliate links, I may earn commissions, which helps support my website. This does not have an impact on posts or my opinion of any reviewed products. If you find this post helpful and want to say thanks, please buy me a coffee or take a look at my book on Amazon. It keeps this page ad-free. Thank you!