Macspiration 51
Control Another Mac Remotely For Free

Have you ever gotten a call from a friend or relative who needed help with their Mac and it was the kind of help that required your seeing the computer? Instead of going over to that person’s house, you could just fix it from your computer, with the right software.

There is commercial software available that will let you control another Mac from your computer, but there are also a few free options out there. I’m going to write about one of the free options, which is also one of the easiest options.

First, before downloading any software, each computer needs at least 10.2 installed. Both computers also need a high speed internet connection. You will also need someone on both computers. A phone, iChat conversation, or some other way to communicate is also needed.

If these specifications are met, you are ready for the software. The computer that you will be connecting to (I’ll call this SickMac) will need a piece of software call “Share My Desktop.” It is available at http://www.bombich.com/software/smd.html. The computer connecting to the other computer (I’ll call this ControlMac) will need something called “Chicken of the VNC.” Download this here: http://www.bombich.com/software/smd.html.

Once you have the two pieces of software downloaded and installed on the hard drive, there is one more setup step to do on SickMac. You need to disable the firewall or open port 5901. To do this go to System Preferences from the Apple Menu. Choose Sharing. Click Firewall. The easiest thing is to turn off the firewall by clicking “Stop.” You just have to remember to turn the firewall back on when you are finished.

To open a port click “New” in this window. In the window that drops down, make the “Port Name” show “Other.” In “TCP Port,“ type 5901. In “Description,” you can type anything you want. Click OK. You can now close System Preferences and continue.

Have the person at SickMac run Share My Desktop. Once that opens, all they have to do is click “Start Sharing.”

On your computer you need to run Chicken of the VNC.

In “Host,” you need the person at SickMac to read you the IP address showing in Share My Desktop. You also want to add “:5901” after the IP address. Keep “Display” set to zero. In “Password” enter the password showing in Share my Desktop. It will be case sensitive, so be careful. This password will change each time SMD is run, so there is no need to remember it. Finally, click “Connect.”

If all goes well, a new window will open on ControlMac showing the desktop of SickMac. You can now control files, windows, folders, programs, etc. on SickMac through that window. (Make sure the person on the other end is not playing with the mouse.) Depending on the connection speeds on both ends and the computer specs, you may experience a little lag effect.

There are some limitations to this method. If SickMac is connected to a router and ControlMac is not on the same network as SickMac you will need to do something called port mapping on SickMac. This is too complicated to get into here, but fairly easy instructions for this can be found at this site: http://homepage.mac.com/placebo.x/router/.

Both pieces of software, while not universal binaries, work fine on Intel Macs.

This method is really cool once you get it working right.

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