MacOS – Screen sharing not working on OS X 10.11 El Capitan

mac-minimacosremote desktop

I'm running OS X 10.11 El Capitan and Screen Sharing has become more and more tedious. I have a MacBook Air, my usual laptop, and a Mac mini to which I want to connect with Screen Sharing (on my MacBook Air).

However, most of the time I cannot see anything on the Sidebar of the Finder on my MacBook Air. If I manually Go → Connect to Server and enter vnc://myhomemini (which is the server that my Mac mini's Sharing settings suggests I use), I just the popup message:

Unable to resolve “myhomemini”
Verify the name you entered and make sure your network connection is working.

Neither computer has a firewall enabled. Both are on the same home network that belongs to me, of course, and both are online without issues individually. On the Mac mini (destination computer, whose screen I want to see on the MacBook Air), the Sharing settings have both Screen Sharing and File Sharing enabled. Nothing else like Remote Management etc is enabled.

What else? Apple's support website is utterly useless. All the advice on the Internet is also speaking of random things from 2012, etc. Welcome any ideas.

Best Answer

Sounds like one computer isn't able to reach the other.

Try using vnc://myhomemini.local

Adding the .local tells your Mac that it should use bonjour (multicast DNS) to resolve the address. If everything is on the same network and multicast is allowed (usually the case) this should allow your computers to find each other.

Another possibility is that your network is configured not to allow hosts to talk to each other. So even though they are on the same network, the router doesn't allow them to talk. Look at the settings on your router to determine if that is the case or not.

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MacOS – VNC (screen sharing) stopped worked after enabling filevault2

I can confirm that FileVault 2 does not disable VNC client or service. I use encryption on all Macs and VNC between them frequently (both at home and at my F500 employer).

Can you be more specific about how it is failing? Do you see "Share Screen" option in Finder? Have you tried via Finder > Go > Connect to Server? Does it time out or give an error message?

MacOS – How Do I Disable Remote Management and Enable Screen Sharing

I found the following code in a file I didn't open for a long time. It enables Remote Login on a remote device. Save the script somewhere (from now on referred to as /path/to/script/). Copy the script to the other device.

tell application "System Preferences" to set current pane to pane "com.apple.preferences.sharing"
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    click checkbox 1 of row 6 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of window "Sharing"
end tell

This enables remote login. Now, to disable remote management and enable screen sharing, use the same script, but remove the 3rd line and add these 2 lines:

tell application "System Preferences" to set current pane to pane "com.apple.preferences.sharing"
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    click checkbox 1 of row 7 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of window "Sharing"
    click checkbox 1 of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of window "Sharing"
end tell

To copy this script on the remote device, use scp (secure copy). To use scp type
scp /path/to/script username@IP.of.other.device:/some/path
OR
scp username@hostnameOfDevice:/some/path/
The second option (using the device hostname) requires that the devices are on a computer-to-computer network, so it will not work on a normal wifi network. You will see a prompt requesting the password of username. When you type the password, you will not see any text appear (obviously to prevent people from seeing the password).

Once it is copied, remotely log into the device:
ssh username@IP.of.other.device
OR
ssh username@hostnameOfDevice
Again, the use of the hostname requires computer-to-computer network. Once logged in, run the script using osascript /some/path/theScript.scpt (remember that using scp we copied the script to /some/path, this will be different on your device). This will disable remote management and enable screen sharing.
Good luck!

Best Answer

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