How to expand the remote desktop image size

displayremote desktop

I'm primarily a PC/*nix user and just have a MacBook Pro for the occasional iOS dev work. Rather than clutter up my desk with multiple screens, keyboards, etc, I use my Windows box as my primary and do full screen remote connections to the other machines. Works great for the various Windows and *nix boxes I need to access. However, the Mac only allows me to connect (via VNC) at the resolution of the built-in screen. The built-in screen is pretty low res compared to my large desktop monitor on the machine I'm connecting from. Currently I can either work inside a small window, or stretch it to fit (making the pixels huge). What I'd like to do is have a remote session at the full resolution of the machine I'm connecting from. Any good solutions for this use case?

Best Answer

Mac OS doesn't have a terminal services centric design, so the loginwindow ties the remote screen resolution tightly to the actual physical screen dimensions.

Some easy solutions are to connect the Mac to a display (or a display dongle that simulates a plug and play monitor of a resolution of your choosing to the OS) so that the OS allocates a larger pixel boundary when the user logs in.

Alternatively, you could get software like SwitchResX to force the display to a size of your choosing.