Fix OpenClaw Gateway “Pairing Required” Error

Setting up a new OpenClaw Gateway and hitting a “pairing required” roadblock on your dashboard? Don’t worry—authorising your devices is incredibly straightforward and can be done right from your terminal.

Before we jump into the steps, take a look at the terminal screenshots above. Notice that clean SNBD Host • OpenClaw Gateway header? That’s the beauty of running your infrastructure on SNBD Host. Instead of spending hours wrestling with dependencies, OS installations, and baseline configurations, SNBD Host provides a fully optimised, pre-configured OpenClaw environment straight out of the box. You get to skip the tedious setup and jump right into managing your network.

If you’re ready for a hassle-free hosting experience, you can grab your own pre-configured OpenClaw Gateway from SNBD Host today.

Once your server is spun up, here is the quick 3-step process to get your devices paired and approved:

Step 1: Switch to the OpenClaw User First, you need to operate as the dedicated gateway user. From your root prompt, simply drop into the openclaw account:

Step 2: List Pending Devices Next, pull up the list of devices currently waiting for authorization:

This will output a neat table showing any pending connection requests, complete with their Request IDs, Device hashes, roles, and IP addresses. (And enjoy the built-in sass from the OpenClaw CLI while you’re at it!)

Step 3: Approve the Request Find the Request ID (a long string of characters) for the device you want to authorize from the table, and run the approval command:

Example: openclaw devices approve cbaa05a1-ffee-4e21-8d3d-49602c7dce5f

Once you run this, you’ll get an “Approved” confirmation message. Just repeat Step 3 for any other devices in your pending list, and your gateway is fully connected!