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Comment by kevingadd | Hacker News Reader

The Apple requirement to have a keyboard + mouse plugged in even if you're doing remote desktop or using a remote display is really frustrating. It seems like a few releases ago you could fix it with an app, but now you're stuck. Even worse on the laptops where it seems like a monitor is required too...

I wonder if this app manages to get around that somewhat through trickery?

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I have a mac mini I use as a media server. It has no keyboard, mouse, or display. I VNC into it from my iPad or use Screen Sharing from my Macbook Air just fine, although I have reached for a keyboard once to solve a problem.

But I do not doubt you are describing a real problem. Can you tell me under what circumstances using a remote desktop requires a mouse and keyboard to be physically plugged in?

Not so much mouse and keyboard, but display. For at least a while (not sure if it's still the case) graphics acceleration would be disabled if there wasn't a display, leading to things like [0] and [1]

0: https://macminicolo.net/blog/files/build-a-dummy-dongle-for-...

1: https://www.amazon.com/NewerTech-Headless-Video-Accelerator-...

Thank you.

I had no idea. That could explain why VNC is slow on my mini, but since I use it primarily as a headless server, I can live with that.

this was fixed in software a while ago, even my old 2011 (?) Mac mini no longer needed the dummy hdmi dongle connected to have aresponsive/hw accelerated UI via remote access

On laptops you need to have a mouse keyboard and a screen connected if you want to be able to keep it turned on in clamshell mode. Can't say about desktops.

An interesting way to achieve this that I've recently discovered is that I can use Apple's built-in Screen Sharing application to act as the keyboard, mouse, and display when connecting to a clamshell MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro then only needs to be connected to power and the network.

Yes. But without trickery. The actual product is a display port or USB-C dongle that you connect to your mac and that pretends to be a display

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