Can RDP clients launch remote applications and not desktops

Question

Can RDP clients launch a remote application and then only display that application (and not the desktop)? The application would appear fullscreen within the client and if th

Answer 1

"alternate shell" doesn't seem to work anymore in recent versions of Windows, RemoteApp is the way to go.

remoteapplicationmode:i:1
remoteapplicationname:s:Purpose of the app shown to user...
remoteapplicationprogram:s:C:\...\some.exe
remoteapplicationcmdline:s:

To get this to work under e.g. Windows 10 Professional, one needs to enable some policy:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services]
"fAllowUnlistedRemotePrograms"=dword:00000001

Answer 2

RDP will not do that natively.

As other answers have said -- you'll need to do some scripting and make policy changes as a kludge to make it hard for RDP logins to run anything but the intended application.

However, as of 2008, Microsoft has released application virtualization technology via Terminal Services that will allow you to do this seamlessly.

Answer 3

Yes, you can change the default shell from Explorer.exe to a specific application.

In Regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. The current shell should be Explorer.exe. Change it to YourApp.exe. That will change the shell for all users who log on to the machine. If you only want to change it for a specific user, go to the same key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER instead.

Answer 4

This is called RemoteApp. To use it you need to install Terminal Services, which is now called Remote Desktop Services.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/10817.publishing-remoteapps-in-windows-server-2012.aspx