How to Share Your Mac Screen Over the Internet

Sharing your Mac's screen with someone on the same Wi-Fi is easy. Doing it over the internet is where macOS quietly gives up on you. Here are the ways that actually work, depending on what you're trying to do.

If a person is on the other end: use Messages or FaceTime

This is the most underrated feature in macOS. Open Messages, click the conversation with the other person, click their name at the top, and choose screen sharing. You can share your screen or ask to see theirs, it works over the internet, and there's nothing to configure. FaceTime can do it too during a call.

For helping your parents figure out their email, this is the answer. Done.

If it's your own Mac and nobody's home

Messages doesn't help here because someone has to accept the request on the other end. And the built-in Screen Sharing setting only works on your local network. Getting it to work remotely means port forwarding, which exposes VNC to the internet and is a bad idea, or running a VPN, which is a real project. We went deeper on that in this post.

The practical answer is an app that handles the connection for you. That's what Macky does:

• Install the Mac app from macky.dev. It sits in your menu bar.
• Install the Macky app on your iPhone from the App Store.
• Sign in on both with the same account and set a Master Password.
• Open the iPhone app, pick your Mac, and connect.

You get your Mac's screen live on your phone with full mouse and keyboard control, from any network. The connection runs over WebRTC and is end-to-end encrypted, so what's on your screen stays between your two devices. There's a built-in terminal too, which is handy when what you actually need is to run a command rather than click around.

If you need Mac-to-Mac over the internet

Two Macs in different places is its own topic, with a couple of decent options including a VPN or apps like Screens and Jump Desktop. We covered it in how to remote desktop from one Mac to another.

The short version

• Helping someone remotely: Messages screen sharing, free and built in.
• Reaching your own Mac from your phone: Macky, two minutes of setup.
• Mac to Mac across the internet: a VPN plus Screen Sharing, or a third-party app.