Enabling SSH on a Raspberry Pi So You Never Need a Keyboard Again

I use Raspberry Pis for a lot of projects around my home like kiosks, wall displays, and headless boxes tucked behind furniture. For all of them, SSH is how I make changes without digging out a keyboard, searching for cable adapters, or crawling behind a screen. If you're setting up a Pi for a similar use case, here's how to enable SSH so you can control it remotely from day one.

Once SSH is enabled, you can do the following remotely:

• Shut down or reboot safely
• Update kiosk scripts
• View logs
• Fix mistakes

This post covers the three ways to enable SSH on modern Raspberry Pi OS, from easiest to most bulletproof.

Setting Up SSH

Option 1: Enable SSH via Raspberry Pi Imager

Before you even boot the Pi, you'll need to flash the OS onto the SD card. During that process, you can enable SSH by following these steps:

1. Open Raspberry Pi Imager
2. Click Advanced Settings
3. Enable SSH
4. Set a username and password (pick a strong one—SSH exposes your Pi to the network, and weak passwords are easy targets for bots)
5. (Optional) Add Wi‑Fi credentials
6. Flash the SD card.

Now, SSH will be ready on the first boot. This is my preferred method because everything is configured before the Pi even turns on.

Option 2: Enable SSH from the Desktop

If your Pi is already up and running, go to the command line and run:

1sudo raspi-config
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Then, navigate to Interface Options → SSH → Enable. That's it for the desktop method. Once SSH is enabled, you sign in remotely with the username and password for the existing user on the system (such as the default user).

Option 3: Enable SSH Headlessly (No Screen)

If you don't have a screen handy, you can follow the steps below to enable SSH:

1. Mount the Pi’s boot partition on another computer.
2. Create an empty file named ssh (without an extension).
3. Eject the card and boot the Pi.

That's all you need. SSH will be enabled automatically on boot. Once it's enabled, you sign in remotely with the username and password for the existing user on the system (such as the default user).

Connecting via SSH

With SSH enabled, you can connect to the Raspberry Pi from another machine with the following command:

1ssh <username>@<pi-ip-address>
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After running the ssh command, you'll be prompted for the password. Then, once you've successfully signed in, you'll have access to the command line on the Raspberry Pi.

If you don't know the IP address for the Pi, you can either check your router or run the command below.

1hostname -I
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Final Thoughts

Whichever method you choose, having SSH enabled means you can update scripts, check logs, or reboot safely, all from the comfort of your laptop. If you're building a kiosk or wall display, I'd also recommend setting up your Node.js apps to start automatically on boot so everything just works after a power cycle.