Limiting the Color Mode for VNC Connections

Please note that the following text is an updated version of this older post. The update applies to SiteRemote 5.1 and above (including version 6.1, which is the current version at the time of writing this post).

SiteRemote uses the auto mode to set the colors for the VNC session. This usually provides the best experience. You may like or need to limit the color mode to 256 colors only when establishing the connection, mainly because of poor connection speed.

To switch from auto mode to 256 colors you need to edit a file on the PC you are establishing the connection from. On this PC you have installed the UVNC client for SiteRemote, it is usually located in the path C:\Program Files (x86)\PROVISIO\VncViewer\. There you can find the file options.vnc. Please open the file with an editor like Notepad. You will see that there is not much in it:

[connection]
index=

These lines need to be added to the file:

[options]
autoDetect=0
QuickOption=0

The complete file should now look like this:

[connection]
index=
[options]
autoDetect=0
QuickOption=0

Save the file under its original name. Next you need to right-click the file, choose Options -> Security and give the default Windows Users group read and write access to the file.

When you now start your next VNC session it will default to just 256 colors, therefore speeding up the view on a slow Internet connection.

Note that independent from this change you can always edit the options of a running VNC connection by clicking the Options button in the upper toolbar of the VNC window. This allows you to make one-time changes to the current connection.