SSH Access#

⚠️ Make sure you write down your SSH password. ⚠️
If you don’t write down your password and lose access to the UI, you will be unable to access your device. An Emergency Recovery will be required.

It is also recommended to setup a ssh-key instead of using password authentication.

Finding Your Device Password and IP Addresses#

If your device version is 3.8 or lower#

  1. Connect your device to Wifi, or with a USB cable to your computer.

  2. On your device, open the Menu from the main page.

  3. Select “Settings”.

  4. Select “Help”.

  5. Select “Copyright and licenses”.

  6. You will find your password and the IP addresses you can use to access your device underneath the “GPLv3 Compliance” header.

If your device version is 3.9 or higher#

  1. Connect your device to Wifi, or with a USB cable to your computer.

  2. On your device, open the Menu from the main page.

  3. Select “Settings”.

  4. Select “About”.

  5. Select “Copyright and licenses”.

  6. You will find your password and the IP addresses you can use to access your device underneath the “GPLv3 Compliance” header.

Connecting via SSH#

SSH (Secure Shell) allows you to remotely login to a command line on a device. The reMarkable has a dropbear SSH server running on it that allows you to connect as the root user with no configuration required.

Picking a SSH client#

Newer versions of windows already come with OpenSSH installed. If it is not installed you can install OpenSSH for windows (Only the OpenSSH client is needed). You may also use PuTTY.

On MacOS and Linux you will have OpenSSH or a compatible SSH client installed already that can be used.

Connecting over USB#

After you connect your device to your computer with a USB cable, it will setup a local network over the USB cable that can be used to access the device. You can use this for SSH, as well as the USB Web Interface.

From your computer you can now use your SSH client to connect to your reMarkable using 10.11.99.1 as the hostname.

ssh root@10.11.99.1

Connecting over Wifi#

When your device is connected to Wifi, you can connect to it with SSH using the IP address(es) assigned by your router. Replace <ip-address> in the following command with a valid IP Address for your device. See Finding Your Device Password and IP Addresses for information on how to find the IP address.

ssh root@<ip-address>

Depending on your network configuration, your reMarkable may also be available via hostname like remarkable, remarkable.local, or remarkable.lan.

ssh root@remarkable
ssh root@remarkable.local
ssh root@remarkable.lan

Setting Up a SSH Key#

⚠️ You may need to enable ssh-rsa keys. ⚠️

If you encounter the following error when attempting to use a SSH key:

Unable to negotiate with 10.11.99.1 port 22: no matching host key type found. Their offer: ssh-rsa

You will need to enable ssh-rsa keys. See How do I resolve the “no matching host key type found. Their offer: ssh-rsa” error when attempting to SSH into my device? for more information.

Creating a SSH Key#

A SSH key allows you to connect to your device over SSH without having to use the password.

If you are using PuTTY, you will need to use PuTTYgen to generate your SSH key instead.

The following command will generate a private and public SSH key pair:

ssh-keygen \
  -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa_remarkable \
  -N ''

ssh-keygen \
  -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa_remarkable \
  -N ''

⚠️ The generated SSH key will not have a password. ⚠️

This is a minor security concern, as anybody who can access the file will be able to use it to access your device. You can generate one with a password by using the following command instead:

ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa_remarkable

Installing a SSH Key on Your Device#

After you’ve created your SSH key private and public key pair, you’ll need to install your public key to your device. This way it will trust the private key used by your computer when it attempts to connect over SSH.

If you are using PuTTY, you will need to follow the PuTTYgen documentation for installing your SSH key instead.

The following command will install your SSH public key on your device:

ssh-copy-id \
  -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_remarkable \
  root@10.11.99.1

⚠️ This will not work properly until OpenSSH 9.4. ⚠️

Due to a bug in ssh-copy-id this installs to the wrong location on the device on versions of OpenSSH older than 9.4. You can check your version of OpenSSH with the following command on your computer:

ssh -V

For these versions you can use the following commands to install your public key instead:

ssh root@10.11.99.1 \
  mkdir -p -m 700 /home/root/.ssh
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa_remarkable.pub \
| ssh root@10.11.99.1 \
  tee -a /home/root/.ssh/authorized_keys
ssh root@10.11.99.1 \
  chmod 600 /home/root/.ssh/authorized_keys

SSH Config File#

You can set up an alias that is easier to remember by adding the following lines to the ~/.ssh/config file on your computer:

host remarkable
  Hostname 10.11.99.1
  User root
  Port 22
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_remarkable

This will allow you to simplify how you connect to your device over SSH.

ssh remarkable

External Resources#