Apple Remote Desktop vs Screen Sharing vs Remote Management

Apple has three different things with confusingly similar names: Screen Sharing, Remote Management, and Apple Remote Desktop. People mix them up constantly, and honestly, that's Apple's fault. Here's what each one actually is.

Screen Sharing

This is the free one built into every Mac. You turn it on in System Settings under General, then Sharing. Once it's on, another Mac on the same network can view and control your screen. Under the hood it's VNC.

For most people who just want to hop onto another Mac in the house, this is all you need. It works well on a local network and costs nothing.

Remote Management

This one sits right next to Screen Sharing in System Settings, and here's the thing: you can only have one of them on at a time. That's because Remote Management includes screen sharing plus a bunch of admin permissions on top, like copying files, running scripts, and reporting.

Remote Management exists so that the Apple Remote Desktop app (and MDM tools) can manage the Mac. If nobody is managing your Mac with those tools, you don't need it. Regular Screen Sharing is the right switch.

Apple Remote Desktop

This is an actual app Apple sells on the Mac App Store for $79.99. It's built for IT admins who manage a fleet of Macs: think a school computer lab or an office full of machines. It can push software to fifty Macs at once, run Unix commands on all of them, and generate reports.

It's also old. The interface hasn't changed much in years, and most organizations have moved on to modern MDM tools. If you're one person with one or two Macs, this app is not for you.

So which one do you need?

• You want to control another Mac in your house: Screen Sharing. It's free and already installed.
• You manage a fleet of Macs for work: Remote Management, driven by Apple Remote Desktop or an MDM.
• You want to reach your Mac when you're away from home: none of these, honestly. They're all built for local networks. Getting them to work over the internet means setting up a VPN or port forwarding. We wrote about that in this post.
• You want to control your Mac from your iPhone: also none of these. Apple's tools are Mac-to-Mac only.

If your phone is the remote

For that last case, Macky is what we built. It puts your Mac's screen on your iPhone with full mouse and keyboard control, plus a real terminal. No VPN, no port forwarding, no VNC settings. You install the Mac app and the iPhone app, sign in, and connect. The connection is end-to-end encrypted, so nothing you do passes through anyone's servers.

It works from anywhere, not just your home network. That's the main gap in Apple's built-in tools, and it's the one Macky fills.