Free VNC Client Inside Mac OS X 10.5 from Apple @ arthur.wiebe

Free VNC Client Inside Mac OS X 10.5 from Apple

Posted on December 5th, 2007 Arthur 10 comments

Inside Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) there is a new feature called screen sharing. Basically the way it works is if another computer is connected to the local network with remote desktop (VNC) or screen sharing enabled it shows up in the Shared section of the Finder like this:

Clicking on “Share Screen” asks for a password and then you can remotely take control of the other computer.

Now it starts to get interesting. I enabled Remote Desktop on a Ubuntu 7.10 box and OSX saw it immediately. So basically it’s completely cross platform compatible. So I thought maybe I could use this application as a general purpose VNC client, and yes you can!

The “Screen Sharing” application is stored in file:///System/Library/CoreServices/.

So basically I dragged it into the Dock and now it’s there for me to connect to your box whenever I want. All it asks is for the host and password if needed so it doesn’t have any advanced features at all. But it works.

Uncategorized leopard, mac os x, remote desktop, Technology, vnc
10 responses to “Free VNC Client Inside Mac OS X 10.5 from Apple”
1. Paul Schopf January 26th, 2008 at 09:57
  
  Thanks for this tip. I was struggling with ARD 2 which will not work with Leopard, but I really don’t need all the stuff ARD does, just the screen sharing. Now if I could just get something like 1Password working with it, that would be nice.
2. tashmooclam July 28th, 2008 at 11:50
  
  This works! BUT. Although I didn’t see it as required, you must create a password in Ubuntu or it won’t connect. I am running ubuntu 8.04 I would love to learn how to do this over huge distances. I don’t know what I’d use this for, but it’s kinda cool.
3. Jeff September 10th, 2008 at 14:51
  
  thanks tashmooclam for the tip. i was trying to share my beautiful gnome desktop in Ubuntu 8.04 and was having trouble…. until I required a password. sweeeeeet
4. “Hidden” VNC Client in MacOS X Leopard • Blog Archive • m2-j.info September 28th, 2008 at 18:46
  
  [...] You can read more about arthur.wiebe’s discovery here. [...]
5. David October 7th, 2008 at 19:05
  
  You can also use Go -> Connect to Server… from the Finder and just type vnc://hostname to connect. This will transparently use the Screen Sharing app.
6. Salutis February 11th, 2009 at 22:10
  
  Thanks!
7. Luis March 10th, 2009 at 06:57
  
  I was wondering if anybody knows how to open up a VNC client session on a solaris machine from MacOS 10.5.x. I seem to be able to open them up fine with my windows machine. Basically I have two servers running one under ../bin/Xvnc :1 -desktop hostname – and the other under :2. When I try to open either one of them using vnc://hostname:1 I get a connection failed dialog box in leopard asking to ensure that Screen Sharing is enabled on the system I’m trying to ask.
  any ideas ?.
  –Luis
8. Ster April 17th, 2009 at 14:26
  
  Mac’s viewer will not connect to my UltraVNCServer configured with “Require MS Logon”
  
  Is their an alternative viewer that works? (Chicken of the VNC does not either)
9. Arthur April 28th, 2009 at 07:21
  
  Another great VNC client for OS X is http://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html
10. Julie L. September 9th, 2009 at 17:17
  
  Thank you for this information; I was looking for something quick ‘n dirty to get onto a VNC server on one of my PC’s from my Mac.
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