Apple's Remote Desktop client is bundled for free with every Mac | Hacker News Reader

Apple's Remote Desktop client is bundled for free with every Mac

benguild.com

82 pointstommyd43 comments

A couple of things:

1) This isn't the same as Apple's Remote Desktop product, which can be used for a host of other things related to remote system management like installing software and automation. See the product page for details:

http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

2) You don't need to dig around in Library/CoreServices to use this, which is why Apple didn't put it in utilities. Vis a vis iOS, you start from the opposite end that you normally would on a desktop OS. Just like in iOS how you navigate to your photos in order to send a photo, you navigate to the computer you want to control in order to initiate a remote session.

HOW TO: Remote control a Mac on your network without digging around in CoreServices

First - Make sure "Remote Management" is enabled on the target machine.

1. Launch 'System Preferences'.

2. Click 'Sharing'.

3. In the service list on the left, check the box next to 'Remote Management'.

Second - Initiate remote control from your computer.

Note: You must have "Show Toolbar" enabled to follow these steps.

1. Launch a new finder window.

2. In the left pane of the Finder window, scroll down to 'SHARED'.

3. Click the name of the computer you wish to control.

4. A gray bar should appear at the top; click 'Share Screen...'.

Viola! Screen Sharing should launch automatically and connect.

If you're an old school Mac user, you might have disabled 'Show Toolbar' in the finder. You can get it back in one of two ways. With a Finder window active:

1. Press Cmd+Opt+t.

2. In the menu bar, click 'View', 'Show Toolbar'.

There are, of course, other ways of getting to the 'Network' portion of the Finder browser, but the 'SHARED' bar on the left is pretty easy and always accessible.

Awesome... That's why I love hacker news. You always have the perfect comments here. Bravo.

Any computer which can advertise vnc over mDNS (which apple calls 'Rendezvous') will show up in finder sidebar. I have my own custom a raspberryPi image set up to do this out of the box. You can get this going on any Linux box by installing avahi. Then google for instructions to configure avahi to advertise vnc. I believe if you advertise smb or afp that will also cause it to show in the sidebar, but I haven't tried it.

Bonus if you have Back To My Mac enabled!

Back To My Mac will enable Wide Area Bonjour and do all the necessary port forwarding (via UPnP/NAT-PMP and private IPv6 network between your Macs), as long as all machines are logged into the same Apple ID account, you can access the shared services on target machine (VNC, SSH, file sharing, etc.) from a different network right from Finder as well.

Viola! Screen Sharing should launch automatically and connect.

Syntax nit: A viola is a stringed instrument. "voilà" is French for "see" or "there!"

There is a good chance that this was a deliberate misusage.

Not everyone can type accents on their default keyboard. I don't think anyone was really confused between that and teh stringed instument given the context.

Pedantic: he mixed up the I and O as well.

Accents aside, the 'i' and 'o' come in different orders.

Use your phone's predictive text recommendations, et voilà!

This guy right here has a solid grammatical bass.

Let it be known - HN users not down with cheesy puns.

Or you make sure that the Finder is the active application and you press Command-K (Go > Connect to Server). In the window that pops up, you type

    vnc://<address>

This will work both with macs and their special authentication and with any other VNC server (using just a password).

Other protocols that work are afp:// (apple file sharing), smb:// (windows file sharing), http:// (webdav), https:// (webdav), ftp:// (ftp)

nfs:// will also work in the Connect to Server window.

I use these two functions, VNC and NFS, every day on my network. Almost all macs. Had no idea these were unknown...

How does junk like this get posted on a tech web site. This is the built in VNC client and is very publicly shipped with OS X, and it has nothing to do with Apple's remote desktop.

You could always do CMD+k to bring up the "Connect to server dialog" and type

    vnc://ComputerName.local

to VNC into it (if screen sharing is configured in the system prefs on the target machine).

Ironically, I wrote this back in 2011 and someone else submitted it earlier today. :D

The thing is... Apple doesn't make this feature prominent. The only real consumer-friendly way to access Screen Sharing was through iChat back in the day. The Application is buried within the System folder and most people think you have to pay $50 USD for Apple's commercial Remote Desktop solution.

Most people don't need all of the features of the full client, such as remotely installing packages or managing machines. They just want to access their machines through the LAN or through Back to My Mac. https://www.apple.com/support/icloud/back-to-my-mac/

It's not the same software, but it's basically a scaled down version to get the job done.

Mac power users have known about this feature for over a decade. Theres also a pretty powerful wifi diagnostic tool in the coreservices folder, if you're going to be digging around in there anyway.

In Mavericks at least, you can hold Option and click on the Wifi icon in the menu bar to get an "Open Wireless Diagnostics" option in the menu. And you're right -- it's pretty handy when you're surrounded by college apartments that all have their own routers.

Do you mean the "Network Diagnostic" application?

Yes, that is it. I walk around my flat with it open to find low SNR spots. It also helped me diagnose a failing wifi radio chip.

Are you talking about this command-line tool ? /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport . Great to scan wifi networks and find unused channels.

You can access Screen Sharing from the Finder with the same ol' cmd+k (Connect to Server...) and enter a url (e.g. vnc://my_remote_mac).

Works with the open command from a shell too: open vnc://my_remote_mac

This is not a secret. And it's the Remote Desktop (VNC) client, not the management application sold by Apple

$ open vnc://myhost.example.org/

Or Finder > Connect to Server -> vnc://myhost.example.org

Or Finder > Cmd+K -> vnc://myhost.example.org

ScreenSharing used to work perfectly for me. I could see my second Mac listed as a "Shared" device in the left-panel of my Finder which would keep in-touch over iCloud. Even if the home machine was asleep, connecting with ScreenSharing would wake up the remote machine and allow me to connect. Since updating to Mavericks I'd say I'm about 20% for this method working. For whatever reason, I can no longer wake-up my remote machine using this method. Wish it was as reliable as it used to be - but I haven't found a fix.

I used VNC a few times to connect to a Mac build box ( I only used Linux professionally ) and ran into a lot of problems with artifacting ( even on a dedicated Gigabit LAN ) or more annoying the remote service would crash and the only way back in was to SSH into the Mac box, kill the remote service, kill all user sessions, and restart.

This is NOT remote desktop. remote desktop does so much more than screen sharing. This is just a vnc client.

Microsoft publishes a free 'Remote Desktop Client for Mac', which can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1814...

This is a Mac equivalent of mstsc.exe on a Windows machine - an RDP client.

And despite the similar naming, this is a completely different application. The Microsoft application is an RDP client.

That's a post from 2011. Screen Sharing is available to any mac under System Preferences>Sharing

This is more of a useful tip than a secret. If you've got Back to my Mac set up, your other Macs will appear in the Finder sidebar. Just select one and then click "Share Screen…" Other Macs on the local network may show up with the option too.

This is Screen Sharing. Not Remote Desktop. And it isn't hidden: if there's a Mac on your local network, and you navigate to it in finder, there's a "Share Screen" button right there.

Blog post from "14 FEB 2011"

Note that excellent Microsoft Remote Desktop app is free and available from AppStore.

Who the fuck is up voting articles from 2011? Where is the moderation around here. Make sure the date is in the title.

Because something that people might not know that's from 2011 is less relevant in 2014?

It works in Mavericks too, it's a good article in 2011 and today.

Dipshit article from someone who clearly has just installed osx.

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