iChat Screen Sharing

Share and share alike.

Thanks to iChat screen sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop with iChat, making it a cinch to collaborate with a colleague, browse the web with a friend, or pick plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or your buddy's & you both have control at all times. And iChat automatically initiates an audio chat when you start a screen sharing session, so you can talk things through while you're at it.

Screen Sharing via iChat

iChat may not be the quickest way to make a screen sharing connection, but it's the best. What's especially cool about it is: (a) you don't need to know the person's IP address to make a connection; (cool.png you can instantly shift back and forth between having your screen or the other person's screen fill up your display; and © you can copy files from one computer to the other by dragging and dropping files from one screen to the other (when you do this, the transferred files wind up in Leopard's new Downloads folder).

To use this screen sharing variation, both machines must being running Leopard and have iChat open. Also, make sure Screen Sharing Enabled is checked in iChat's Video menu. Here's what to do next:

If you and the other person are both on the same local network, find the other person in iChat's Bonjour List.

For a remote connection, you'll both need to be logged into an iChat-compatible account. You should ideally have the other person's name in your Buddy List.

Select the other person's name from the relevant list.

Either (a) go to the Buddies menu and choose "Ask to Share (person's name)'s Screen..." or (cool.png select the same command from the pop-up menu accessed from the Screen Sharing icon the bottom of the List window, as seen in Figure 1.

A message pops up on the screen of the other computer, asking for the person's permission for you to share their screen. Presumably they are expecting this and will click to Accept.

Assuming nothing goes wrong, you should see the other person's screen on your Mac in short order. A large text message appears across the screen on the shared computer, notifying the user that the computer is now being shared.

To end a screen sharing session, type Command-Escape from either computer. Or, from the computer that is accessing the shared screen, click the X icon in the upper left of the currently smaller window.

Troubleshooting tip: When attempting to connect via screen sharing in iChat, you may get a "communication error" message. Assuming that all settings are correct and you have a viable Internet connection, restarting one or both Macs should fix the problem. If it doesn't, you may instead use the Finder screen sharing method, especially for a local connection. It can work even when the iChat method does not.