noVNC, the open source VNC client that runs inside a browser tab with nothing to install, has turned 16 as a quiet building block of many web management consoles, including those in Proxmox VE and OpenStack. Cendio, the Swedish company behind ThinLinc and now the project’s main maintainer, has looked back on its history in a public thank-you to its creator, Joel Martin, and to the roughly 180 contributors who have sent patches, fixes and translations.

noVNC at 16 in 30 seconds

Joel Martin published noVNC on GitHub in April 2010 as a VNC client built only on HTML5 Canvas and WebSockets.
Today it is mainly maintained by Samuel Mannehed, Pierre Ossman and Tobias Fahleson of Cendio.
It powers the web console in Proxmox VE, OpenStack Nova and ThinLinc Web Access.
Version 1.7.0, released in April 2026, improves memory use and H.264 detection.
According to Cendio, it had 14,120 GitHub stars and 2,686 forks on 20 October 2026.

The project started from an unusual idea at the time: using a web browser as a remote desktop client, with no Java, no plugins and no native application. In 2010, WebSockets had only just arrived in browsers, and noVNC relied on them for something as demanding as streaming a desktop in real time.

From a Hacker News experiment to infrastructure

According to the timeline published by Cendio, the noVNC repository appeared on GitHub in April 2010, and by June that year it was circulating on Hacker News as a full VNC client written in HTML5. Martin built it while working at Sentry Data Systems, which sponsored the early work. Alongside noVNC he created websockify, the proxy that translates browser WebSocket connections into the TCP protocol spoken by VNC servers, and which remains a standard part of most deployments.

The handover happened gradually. Samuel Mannehed, now Cendio’s CTO, made his first contributions in 2013 with touch-friendly improvements such as double clicks and extra keys. Cendio then became the main driving force behind the project, Pierre Ossman joined in 2016 and reshaped the interface, and in 2022 Joel Martin and Solly Ross were named maintainers emeritus. In 2026, Tobias Fahleson, also from Cendio, started merging pull requests.

Ossman, ThinLinc product owner and a longtime TigerVNC developer, said on the Swedish podcast Kodsnack (episode 725) that noVNC became a similar success story: once Cendio got involved and put real resources into it, the project grew and became widely used. It is a familiar pattern in open source infrastructure, where a personal project survives because a company with a direct stake takes over maintenance.

Where noVNC runs without anyone noticing

Anyone who has clicked the Console button in the Proxmox VE web interface to reach a virtual machine or container has probably used noVNC, and the same goes for remote console access to OpenStack Nova instances. SystemAdministration.net has also covered the critical Proxmox VE flaw that allowed root access without a password, a reminder of how sensitive these web consoles are.

Cendio also points to AI agents. According to the company, Anthropic’s computer use demo installs noVNC, and Grok Bot uses it too so users can watch the agent work. ThinLinc Web Access, the browser-based access in Cendio’s product, ships with noVNC inside, and the ThinLinc server also builds on TigerVNC, the project born in 2009 from Cendio’s collaboration with Red Hat and VirtualGL. The company offers ThinLinc free for up to 10 users under its community license.

What noVNC 1.7.0 brings and what to watch when deploying it

The latest stable release, noVNC 1.7.0, shipped on 28 April 2026. On the application side it adds Croatian and Hungarian translations, fixes a styling bug that made some buttons almost disappear, and warns before closing a session tab when view-only mode is not enabled. In the library, the NPM bundle moves to ES-module format, received image data is dropped once rendered to use less memory, H.264 detection improves, and the deprecated showDotCursor setting is removed. The novnc_proxy script now uses the bash builtin type instead of which to check whether websockify is installed.

For administrators, noVNC is still a direct door into a system’s console, so it should be treated as one. Since version 1.4.0 it requires a secure context (HTTPS) in the browser, but that does not replace authentication or restricting who can reach websockify or the VNC server. In panels that embed it, such as Proxmox VE, security depends on the panel itself. The code is on GitHub, mostly under the MPL 2.0 license, and runs in any modern browser, including phones and tablets. Those who prefer a desktop manager for RDP, SSH and VNC can look at mRemoteNG.

Frequently asked questions

What is noVNC?

It is an open source VNC client that runs in the browser using HTML5 Canvas and WebSockets, with no plugins or native app. Joel Martin created it in 2010.

Who maintains noVNC today?

Mainly Samuel Mannehed, Pierre Ossman and Tobias Fahleson of the Swedish company Cendio, which also maintains TigerVNC and develops ThinLinc.

Which platforms use noVNC?

Among others, the Proxmox VE web console, OpenStack Nova remote consoles and ThinLinc Web Access. According to Cendio, Anthropic’s computer use demo also installs it.