Mouse motion is enough to keep a Mac from going to sleep, but once it does sleep, you need a key-press to wake it.
Fortunately, you can get some very small keyboards. A cheap USB number-pad would probably be enough.
No. Mouse movement alone is not enough, but mouse click (or trackpad tap) works just fine. The idea is that accidentally moving the mouse can easily happen, but button presses are assumed deliberate.
1 Like
On the other hand, a two line shell script is even cheaper:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
ssh <username>@<lan address> "caffeinate -u -t 1 || exit 1;"
2 Likes
I’ll get very confused about which computer the documents I create are filed on. What would be great is if my home directory on the iMac was actually a symbolic link to my home directory on the Studio. Is this possible, and if so, how?
You could share the home directory of the Studio and mount it on the iMac.
–e.
Thanks for the suggestion. Is it possible to do this in a way so that when I log in on the iMac, the Desktop I see is the desktop of the Mac Studio (and similarly, the home directory I see is the Mac Studio one, rather than the iMac one)?
It is probably dangerous to share desktops and homes directly.
I suggest is to create a symbolic link within the home of the iMac to the home directory of the mounted disk of the Studio, and a symbolic link within the desktop of the iMac to the desktop directory of the mounted disk of the Studio.
You can automatically mount the Studio home to the iMac by first mounting it by hand, then creating an alias of the mounted home, and put the alias among the login items of the iMac user (from the System Preferences).
On the Studio, you have to share the home folder by adding it in the File Sharing section of the Sharing System Preference.
–e.
2 Likes
I would recommend using aliases instead of symbolic links – if the Studio’s share isn’t already mounted, double-clicking the alias will mount it and open the folder. I don’t think a symbolic link will do that.
Apple used to offer a remote home directory feature as part of MacOS X Server, and while it worked reasonably well, there could sometimes be sync errors. However, some years ago they dropped support for this feature in client MacOS (certainly by Mojave, possibly one release prior), so you couldn’t use remote home directories even if connecting to a Server that supported them. Based on this, I would agree with @franconi that it’s a bad idea to try and essentially recreate a system that even Apple didn’t feel they could support satisfactorily.
With the arrival of a 14" MBP, I’m finally getting around to setting up Universal Control so I can use a single keyboard/trackpad to control both my 2017 27" iMac and the new laptop. While my Logitech MX Keys has buttons to switch between three devices, the magic trackpad I prefer to mice doesn’t, so I was really looking forward to this.
Alas, after several hours this morning I’ve had no luck. Here’s all the things I’ve tried:
- Verified AppleID, Handoff, Universal Control settings are correct
- Checked the firewall is off
- Both computers are on the same wifi, bluetooth is enabled
- Rebooted both computers
- Switched network settings from Ethernet/Wifi to just Wifi; changed to unsecured network, etc
Moving the mouse to the edge of the screens does nothing, and in Display preferences the “Keyboard/Mouse section” of the Add Display menu never shows up.
I’ve also tried using with a 10" iPad Pro from both the new MBPro and the old iMac. Never shows the UC options.
I’ve checked a bunch of sites online and done just about everything I can think of, very frustrating that can’t even see why the options aren’t there, but somewhat par for Apple; it’s magic and just works…unless it doesn’t.
Interesting Side note: The old iMac sees the MBPro screen as one it can extend to, but the reverse is not true (5k screen bandwidth limitation?). Didn’t even think of that as a possibility, actually received my Luna Display dongle in the mail this morning (removed it for setting up UC).
There should be a Universal Control button at the bottom of the right section of the Display Preference. This is where you handle the initial setup (and never touch it again 
).
Yep, and everything checked on both MBP and iMac. Also the Handoff setting in the General control panel is also turned on (and works, often used the copy/past feature between an old 2015 MBP…but now that I think about it the handoff copy/paste didn’t work yesterday at one point…will test).
Well I have at least determined it’s not a hardware problem. I signed out my AppleID on the new MBPro, but didn’t improve anything. I then rebooted the laptop into macOS 13 beta. While that was rebooting, the iMac finally recognized the iPad and I was able to keyboard/mouse share. Also it worked once macOS 13 beta was booted up.
So it seems to be something is out of whack with the install of macOS 12.4 on the MBPro. Since it’s basically a new setup, I’m going to wipe and reinstall, or if I’m feeling really lucky just upgrade to the 12.5 beta to see if that fixes it.
FWIW, it seems that if Continuity copy/paste isn’t working, that’s a good sign that the universal control keyboard/mouse won’t work either.
1 Like