10.5: Start screen sharing remotely in Terminal

Mar 25, '08 07:30:05AM

Contributed by: alblue

Assume you want to do some work on a remote Mac via 10.5's Screen Sharing, but you forgot to enable Screen Sharing before you left the remote Mac. You're now a good distance away, and apparently stuck. Fortunately, because the screen sharing system uses launchd to monitor its state, enabling and disabling is as simple as adding a file in the remote Mac's /Libary/Preferences folder. (Note that you'll need to be able to login to the remote Mac via ssh to run these commands on that Mac.)

$ cd /Library/Preferences
$ echo -n enabled > com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd
To disable screen sharing:
$ cd /Library/Preferences
$ rm com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd
If you have a Finder window open with the remote Mac selected in the Shared section, you'll even note the icon for Screen Sharing coming and going as you do this.

Comments (21)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080318190503111