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I gather that Mist will automatically look for Geth on a local machine via IPC to save it maintaining its own blockchain. Is it possible to tell it to look for an instance of Geth on another machine via HTTP RPC?

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As far as I know Mist can only connect to a local instance, and even then only via IPC. The reason is that is uses a few APIs that are not exposed by default over HTTP and would probably be unsafe to do so (e.g. account management).

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    Absolutely right. If i would make mist be able to connect, then we would have to explain people on how unsafe it is to unlock their account over HTTP etc, as geth doesn't support HTTPS. In the future, when account management is inside mist, rather than geth. This might be useful to add.
    – Fabian Vogelsteller
    Commented Mar 30, 2016 at 10:04
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This feature is available since version 0.8.2 (Pull-Request).

You will need to start the node with RPC enabled:

geth --rpc

Connect Mist via:

Mist --rpc http://localhost:8545

Please mind the security implications:

This is less secure than using local IPC - your passwords will be sent over the wire as plaintext. Only do this if you have secured your HTTP connection or you know what you are doing.

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  • in the PR it says This is ready to be merged for 0.8.2. not 0.8.1
    – knocte
    Commented Aug 6, 2016 at 7:25
  • I confirm this works fine with 0.8.2
    – Bruno Grieder
    Commented Sep 7, 2016 at 13:10
  • so does MIST connects to remote geth using rpc? If Yes, what about security threats of not exposing personal over RPC?
    – Prashant Prabhakar Singh
    Commented Sep 26, 2016 at 3:20
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    I wasn't able to get this working with Ethereum Wallet v0.8.7 on Windows 10 x64. I get the RPC warning message, but then it starts up geth anyway, and eventually gives a connection error message.
    – Jordan Mack
    Commented Oct 28, 2016 at 8:52
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I disagree above with Péter Szilágyi and others. While yes it is not super secure to connect over rpc but it makes life much easier and gives a better architecture in terms of management and custom collaborative development on a private network. Besides mist as wallet/browser should truly do what it supposed to and rely on giant memory sucking space consuming geth process. Thats why services like BaaS getting popular and people shold be able to do connect to daap from their ipad/table and do some client side development.

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