Control Your Mac from the Couch

4. Sharing Screens

In iChat’s Bonjour List window, make sure your master Mac’s status is set to Available instead of Disconnected. Go to the remote Mac and look at iChat’s Bonjour List window. Select the master Mac from the list--note that Bonjour lists available Macs by their current open account. At the bottom of the screen is a series of buttons. Click on the rightmost one and select “Share My Screen with [the master Mac’s name].”

You can also right-click the name in the Bonjour list to get these screen-sharing options in the contextual menu.

5. Remote Desktop Control

Go to the master Mac to see an iChat request asking you if you want to share the other computer’s screen. Click Accept. Your Desktop is then swapped for the other, and you can control the remote Mac as if you were sitting in front of it. Everything works, even keyboard shortcuts (like Command-Tab to cycle through open windows and Option-Command-D to hide or reveal the Dock).

We’re controlling the remote Mac from the master Mac, using the Share Screen function in iChat.

You can hear the remote Mac’s audio, as well as any ambient sound in its vicinity, making it the perfect tool to teach someone remotely, since you can talk to each other. You cannot, however, copy and paste between Macs, and you’ll lose control of the remote computer if its iChat application is quit. Also, although you can restart the Mac remotely, you won’t regain access to it once it has rebooted. For this, you need a different kind of control.

6. Another Way to Share

Quit iChat on both machines. Open the remote Mac’s System Preferences and go to Sharing. Make sure the Screen Sharing option is checked. Go back to the master Mac, open a Finder window, and select the computer we just altered from the sidebar’s Shared section. Click the Share Screen button.

Turn on Screen Sharing in the remote Mac’s System Preferences.

7. Log On Remotely

The Screen Sharing application launches, and once you’ve typed in the remote Mac’s usual username and password, its Desktop appears in a self-contained window. You can even save the username and password in the master Mac’s keychain. As long as the Screen Sharing application is selected, you can control the remote Mac with the mouse, and most keyboard shortcuts work (those that don’t include cycling through applications, hiding the Dock, and logging out: These commands affect the master Mac instead). Since your screen-sharing session is contained in a window, you can go about your business on your own Desktop too. Plus, you can use this method to control more than one remote Mac at a time.

Find the remote Mac in the Shared section of your Finder sidebar, then click the Share Screen button.

8. Cut and Paste

The Screen Sharing window has an oblong button at the upper-right. Click it to reveal a sparse toolbar, which contains two icons that are used to copy and paste from the remote to the master Mac and vice versa. Unlike iChat’s Bonjour screen sharing, no audio is carried over: You only get the visual. But this drawback is more than made up for by the fact that you can do anything with your remote Mac, even restart it. Once the reboot process is done, the Screen Sharing window will then present you with the login screen or the Desktop itself, depending on your remote Mac’s login preferences. You cannot, however, wake it from sleep.

These buttons let you move data from the master Mac’s clipboard to the remote Mac’s clipboard, for cutting and pasting between the two machines.