Apple Screen sharing

TidBITS Talk
1

Hi friends,

I know there’s a bunch of screen sharing apps and services/devices you can buy to use when helping someone online - but I’ve always deferred/preferred native Apple Screen Sharing (for my Apple customers, if not - then remotedesktopgoogle or Zoom screensharing) because -when it works - it’s a real treat. The problem is - it only works about 75% of the time and kind of randomly at that. I’ve had customers connect, then immediately drop and it might take a Facetime connection then screenshare to make the connection. Some days i connect and everything is hunky dory but then it drops and reconnecting is a nightmare. Or my desktop won’t connect but my ipad will (i really dislike using an ipad to remote help on a desktop though). You might notice I have a well versed experinece in this (and many moons ago you could use Apple Remote Desktop for screen sharing and that was, although highly insecure, excellent.) - So, I’m asking - is there a better way to get Apple screen sharing to work more consistently? - maybe some deep setting somewhere. Yesterday I had the drop drop drop until I went to Facetime (sometimes customers don’t want like to facetime for whatever reason…) - both our Internet connections are robust - and then to screen sharing. I’m on Tahoe- most of them are on Sequoia.

Thanks!

2

I get it to work about 90% of the time, but the other 10% don’t seem to have a consistent reason for failure.

The only thing I have found, which doesn’t sound like your problem, is when the remote user has more than one Mac with the same Apple ID and both are on when I initiate the screen share. That usually requires a phone call to diagnose.

3

I feel your pain. I´m using it myself and it works most of the time. It would really help if there was a way to at least find out, why it is not working.

When a user is logged in on more than one Mac, a message is (should be) displayed on all those Macs and the first one where you click “accept” is connected. (In my experience.)