There are a whole lotta ways you could access your mac at home while you’re away and control the desktop. OS X comes with a VNC server built-in, and you could also use the fabulous LogMeIn. But I’ve found, when it comes to user interface, my favorite screen-sharing client is actually iChat. The credit for this idea goes to @lukebussey.
# What’s nice about iChat
The thing I really like about iChat’s screen sharing is the interface to switch between desktops.
You get a little “Picture in Picture” type of window of the other computer, while the remote one is full-screened. Simply click the mini-window and it will flip the two. I like this a lot, as having the remote screen full-screened makes it A LOT easier to control. (Sure, the other options allow you to full-screen as well, but the switching back-and-forth is not nearly as smooth.)
Secondly, in my experience, the iChat client seems tuned for slower connections, and feels a lot more responsive than either the built-in screen sharing software or LogMeIn. Sure, you can tweak these settings in those apps too, but this seems to just work better out-of-the-box.
Thirdly, if you’re using a mac a lot, you’ve probably got iChat open most of the time anyway. So you don’t need to have another program open to control the remote screen, or even a browser window, as you do with LogMeIn.
# OK, I’m convinced, how do I set it up?
So obviously, you’ll need iChat running on the home machine you want to access, but in order to make this work you’ll also need to install the Chax plugin. At the moment, if you’re running Snow Leopard, you’ll need the Chax beta available here, and make sure you start up iChat via the Chax app.
You’ll also need a separate IM account for the server, but you won’t want to give just anyone access to it, so I recommend setting up a new account on your IM network of choice. This is pretty easy for AIM, but for GTalk you’ll need a whole new Gmail account. Let’s use AIM as an example.
For added security, I made the username for my new AIM account a randomly generated string from 1Password, you can use whatever you like to generate passwords. This way, only I know the username for my home machine’s AIM, so no one else can add it to their buddy list. (I generated a password for it the same way.)
Set up the account on iChat on the home machine. Set this account to automatically login when iChat opens.
Click Security. Select “Allow people in my Buddy List”. Add your personal account (and any other accounts you’d like to give access to) to the buddy list.
Now click the Chax settings. Check “Auto-accept screen sharing requests”. For even more security, select options to only accept requests from yourself.
Make sure that iChat/Chax starts up at login by right-clicking the Dock icon and selecting “Options -> Open at Login.” Now, on the remote machine, fire up iChat and add the AIM user you created for your home server.
Right-click on this user and “Ask to share <user>’s screen”.
Done!
As a side note, you can also set up the account on the home server to auto-accept file transfers and specify a download folder in the Chax settings in the same way you set up screen sharing.
