Guide to open SSH on Raspberry Pi for easy access by using a Terminal. With this easy to follow step by step example you are ready withing minutes.

So you want to access your Raspberry Pi from a remote computer. I really hope you don’t have a GUI running on your PI. Pi’s are for building read things but not (yet) as a client PC. Buy a Macbook for that!

I use SSH every day on my Pi. I don’t have a GUI running on my Raspberry Pi, I only use SSH and a terminal. But using SSH out of the box is not possible …

Login in to SSH on a Raspberry Pi

If you want to logon to a Raspberry Pi by using a terminal and SSH you ’ll need the IP address and the SSH password.

The default SSH user and password on Raspberry Pi OS are:
– login: pi
– password: raspberry

However the SSH service must first be enabled in the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool.

For security reasons, the SSH service is not enabled by default on Raspberry Pi.
You need to enable it yourself by going to the menu Start> Preferences> Raspberry Pi Configuration. Go to the “Interfaces” tab and enable SSH.

But again… I’m hoping you are not using the GUI 🙂

So, hook up a keyboard and monitor to you Raspberry Pi and use raspi-config in the terminal:

1. Enter sudo raspi-config in a terminal window
2. Select Interfacing Options
3. Navigate to and select SSH
4. Choose Yes
5. Select Ok
6. Choose Finish

Alternatively SSH on a Raspberry Pi

Alternatively, use systemctl to start the service

sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh

When enabling SSH on a Pi that may be connected to the internet, you should change its default password to ensure that it remains secure. Read this if you want to change the Default Password on a Raspberry Pi?

You can also use ssh keys to login to your raspberry Pi, if you want to do this, please read this!

Happy developing!