ssh -X user@remotehost

remotehost> xlogo
remotehost> xclock

If X forwarding doesn’t work, you may need to check it hasn’t been disabled on the remote host – look in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the remote host.

You can also daisy-chain hosts if you need to access one server via another, for example:

ssh -X user@remotehost
remotehost> ssh -X user2@remotehost2
remotehost2> xlogo

If you want to default ssh to always use ‘-X’ either set up an alias or create a file ~/.ssh/config and add this line to it:

ForwardX11=yes