In our recent blog post about Licensing and Versioning, we shared the upcoming changes to our releases going forward. With that in mind, we’re happy to introduce the Royal TS Version 26 Beta.
Before we get into what’s new: yes, we’re working hard on Royal Connect, and we’re very excited about where that’s headed. But we also want to make one thing very clear: we are still heavily investing in Royal TS/X and Royal Server. Version 26 is a strong example of that.
This beta is the first look at what’s coming in Version 26. It’s not meant to cover every detail just yet. We’ll publish separate blog posts for the bigger topics, but for now, here’s a rough overview of the three major updates you can try in the beta.
Remote Desktop (Microsoft) Plugin Improvements
The Microsoft RDP plugin has gotten some important improvements, especially regarding full screen and external sessions.
Full screen mode with multiple monitors is now handled by launching mstsc.exe, which allows selecting individual screens. This gives us better support for modern multi-monitor setups and aligns more closely with how Microsoft’s own client handles these scenarios.
We’re also introducing a new external process mode for non-embedded sessions. Instead of using the ActiveX control, Royal TS can now use mstsc.exe for these external windows. If you work with many external RDP sessions at the same time, this can improve the responsiveness of the main Royal TS application because the sessions are offloaded into separate processes.
Remote Desktop (FreeRDP) Plugin Improvements
The FreeRDP plugin received a major overhaul.
It no longer relies on wfreerdp.exe. Instead, we completely rewrote the FreeRDP integration. This gives us much more control and allows us to bring many features from the Microsoft RDP plugin over to FreeRDP as well.
Another big improvement is process isolation, similar to what Royal TSX already offers on macOS. If one FreeRDP session crashes, it won’t take down the whole application. That makes the plugin more robust and much better suited for day-to-day use with many active sessions.
Introducing the Royal VNC Plugin
Version 26 also introduces the new Royal VNC Plugin.
This is a complete rewrite and replaces the integrated TightVNC plugin. The new plugin brings support for Apple Remote Desktop protocol extensions, including authentication with a macOS user account, drag and drop file transfer, dynamic resolution, and more.
We’ve also added support for RealVNC authentication and UltraVNC MS-Logon authentication.
Like the new FreeRDP integration, the Royal VNC plugin uses process isolation. A crashing VNC session should no longer affect the entire application, which makes remote access more stable and predictable.
Try the Beta
Royal TS Version 26 is a big step forward for some of our most-used connection types. The focus is clear: better performance, better stability, and more modern integrations.
This is just the beginning. We’ll share more details about each of these areas in dedicated posts soon. In the meantime, we’d love for you to try the beta and tell us what you think.
