This page will help you connect to a Raspberry Pi from your own laptop. Note that this is about connecting to a Raspberry under the same local network (same WIFI or same router). For instructions on establishing a cloud connection, checkout RealVNC website or this entry in Raspberry Pi Documentation.

VNC allows you to control the desktop of a remote machine. RealVNC is installed on Raspbian by default, and you could checkout the official Raspberry Pi website for detailed steps. This guide should be enough for you. There are only two things that might be tricky, and we will give some instructions below.

If you find it hard to read the output of ifconfig, here's a way to get IP address visually. Hover your mouse over the Network icon, and write down the IP address (here it is 192.168.68.101, ignore the slash / and the numbers after it).

Alternatively, when you open your VNC Server, you could also see it:

If you don't know how to open the VNC Server after reading that guide, go to Menu > Run, and then enter "vncserver-x11"

Some people might just prefer to use the command-line to run everything. There is a complete step-by-step guide to set up an SSH connection, on the official website. Check it out: Setting up an SSH Server. Then, see also our own wiki guide on setting up SSH access with VS Code: VS Code ssh to Raspberry Pi.