OS X Mavericks: The Missing Manual

More Dialing In from the Road

If you have a full-time Internet connection, a special thrill awaits. You can connect to your Mac from anywhere in the world via the Internet. If you have a laptop, you don’t need to worry when you discover you’ve left a critical file on your desktop Mac at home.

OS X offers several ways to connect to your Mac from a distant location, including file sharing over the Internet, Back to My Mac, virtual private networking (VPN), FTP, and SSH (secure shell). Chapter 21 has the details.

GEM IN THE ROUGH: Screen Sharing with Windows and Other Oddball Machines

The beauty of Apple’s screen-sharing technology is that it isn’t Apple’s screen-sharing technology. It’s a popular open standard called VNC (Virtual Network Computing).

Once you’ve turned on Screen Sharing on your Mac, any computer on earth with a free VNC client program—sort of a viewer program—can pop onto your machine for a screen share. VNC clients are available for Windows, Linux, pre-Leopard Macs, and even some cellphones. (Not all VNC programs work with the Mavericks version of screen sharing, alas; some require updates.)

To prepare your Mac for invasion, open the Sharing pane of System Preferences. Click Screen Sharing, and then click Computer Settings. Turn on “VNC viewers may control screen with password,” and make up a password. (VNC doesn’t know anything about OS X account passwords, so you’re making up one password for sharing your whole Mac.)

Give that password to the lucky few who have your trust. ...