When tinkering with your Raspberry Pi projects, there will often be times when having a monitor connected to your board is inconvenient and unnecessary. You might be turning your Raspberry Pi into a weather station or making a smart human-following robot. Neither project would need a display to fully function, and having one would only make things too bulky to be portable.
However, without a monitor, how do you control your board? This is where the handy SSH feature comes into play. The Secure Shell (SSH) protocol lets you access the Raspberry Pi command line from a remote PC as long as both devices are connected to the same network (via Raspberry Pi). Here’s how you can enable this tool from the command line:
- Open the terminal window.
- Type sudo raspi-config.
- Go to Interfacing Options.
- Select SSH.
- Hit Yes.
- Choose OK.
- Select Finish.
If you haven’t installed the Raspberry Pi OS on your microSD card yet, you can also enable SSH using the Raspberry Pi Imager’s advanced options (via Raspberry Pi). Simply click the gear icon on the app before writing the image.
