Filed under: Mac 101
Mac 101: Add Screen Sharing folder to Dock for quick access
More Mac 101, our series of tips and tricks for novice Mac users.This is really two tips in one. The first is a fairly basic one that new Mac users might not know: you can drag any folder to the right-hand side your dock (to the right of the faint-white lines which separate the Trash from applications). When you first set up an account, the Applications, Documents, and Downloads folders are already there.
The second is a "news to me" tip: did you know that when you connect via screensharing to different Macs, a file is created in your home directory at ~/Library/Application Support/Screen Sharing/?
These files can be used to reconnect to those machines simply by clicking on them. This means that you can launch Screen Sharing without having to switch to Finder, locate the machine, and then click the "Screen Share..." button. If you screen share to a different Mac, the .vncloc file will automatically be added to that folder. Just drag the folder of Screen Sharing shortcuts to your dock to make it into an easily-accessible Stack.
Using the Finder does have one advantage: if a computer is not available (if it's powered off or asleep) it will automatically disappear from the "Shared" section in Finder. The files in the Screen Sharing folder will still be there, so if you are having trouble connecting, you might check Finder to make sure that it still "sees" the computer you are trying to reach.
Henrik Nyh also suggested putting VNC shortcuts in a Stack in the dock, and he adds the notion of picking some suitable icons for them. Check out his rundown here.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ACK said 12:21PM on 10-19-2009
If you don't like to clutter your dock, but want quick access to screen sharing, there's an app for that:
http://www.klieme.com/ScreenSharingMenulet.html
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Goran said 3:29PM on 10-18-2009
I just love this tip and would like to say, that if you create a separate folder for the .vncloc files, you can actually add similar files created by remote desktop (yeah, the one from Microsoft) and have them in the same stack… ;)
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Ivan said 3:54PM on 10-18-2009
The thing with the icons doesn't work for me under 10.6.
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Kyol said 1:53PM on 10-19-2009
Yeah, I've poked around with everything that I could find for suggestions, and while I can get the com.apple.macmini.icns file to have an icon with icns2icon, and I can copy that icon into my clipboard, and displaying the clipboard shows the icon, but when I paste it onto the .vncloc file, I get the stock .icns icon, and not the mac mini icon. grr rar argh.
TJ Luoma said 3:41PM on 10-18-2009
I have been able to get the files to have the new icons building on the technique Henrik Nyh shared, but they do not appear in the stack. It is possible that this does not work under Snow Leopard.
And yes we covered Screen Sharing Menulet last month:
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/20/screensharingmenulet-fills-a-screen-sharing-gap
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jb510 said 4:18PM on 10-18-2009
Screen sharing under SL defintely has some different hooks than under 10.5. My short cuts stopped working, bonjour browser can't be hacked in, etc... I've seen a couple ways to make screen sharing shortcuts now, using a bookmark dragged from safari, vncloc files, and a plist. For all I know they are all acutally the same thing with different file types.
I do like the idea of putting them all in a spring loaded folder, I only have 3 but they take up a lot of dock space.
I wonder if I can make a shortcut to mount that shared SMB drive that refuses to show up in finder like it's supposed to.... That'd be nice to have in that folder too.
robogobo said 3:57PM on 10-18-2009
no such folder for me.
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Chroma said 6:15PM on 10-18-2009
me too, I'm using Leopard still, not SL.
Roberto said 4:09PM on 10-18-2009
OSX screen sharing uses VNC? For real?
I thought that Apple would emulate the X-via-SSH model that is so commonplace among UNIX users. Quartz over SSH would be orders of magnitude less bandwidth intensive, and way faster.
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jb510 said 6:23PM on 10-18-2009
OSX Screen Sharing app CAN function as a VNC viewer, although it has fewer options than when connecting to a Mac with the ARD protocol.
moyse said 5:42AM on 10-19-2009
Are you sure that's true? I find it far quicker to vnc into a linux box rather then use remote X. There are graphical glitches doing it this way (compression artefacts etc) so I tend to use X if I'm at work, but from home vnc is the only thing that's bearable.
I think X is extremely bandwidth intensive.
And incidentally, however Apple does it the native VNC client is incredibly quick - quicker than any other VNC apps I've tried.
jb510 said 6:27PM on 10-18-2009
Does anyone know if you can modify the .vncloc files using a plist editor to trigger options in screen sharing?
Specifically I'm wondering if I can get one vncloc to launch and open "Scaling ON" and another one "Scaling OFF"? ...similarly "Full Quality" vs " Adaptive quality?
...finally there were all kinds of awesome hidden ARD options that could be enabled in 10.5.X screen sharing by tweaking the pref file, which don't seem to work with 10.6, anyway to enable those?
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jb510 said 6:30PM on 10-18-2009
FWIW, the tweaks I was refering to above are discussed here:
http://www.9to5mac.com/apple-screen-sharing-preferences-hacked-34265477?page=1
GroundFighter said 10:23PM on 10-18-2009
I simply made Safari shortcuts to them, too me much easier and easy to manage with MobileMe and Safari bookmarks snycs with all my Macs. In the form of vnc://24.xxx.xxx.xxx
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Moshe said 10:30PM on 10-18-2009
I use Snow Leopard 10.6.1 and connect 3 computers over the LAN/Wifi. I can't find this folder (Spotlight doesnt find it either).
any solution?
Thanks!
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jb510 said 11:45PM on 10-18-2009
~/Library/Application Support/Screen Sharing/
is
/Users/Your User Name/Library/Application Support/Screen Sharing/
Alternatively, if you use the Go To Folder command, it'll take the ~/Library/App... format.
...It can get a bit confusing with so many /Library folders.... Spotlight won't find it, App Support isn't indexed or search by Spotlight.
Moshe said 10:12AM on 10-19-2009
Thanks! found it, works great!
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mech said 3:36PM on 10-19-2009
I can't locate the folder, in either /Library or ~/Library. Is there another place? I'm on 10.5.8.
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jason mark said 1:36PM on 10-23-2009
not there for me either, but the URL tip in Safari works great.
Peter Ent said 1:26PM on 10-26-2009
Question #1: Suppose you are doing an iChat screen share. You've started your session with someone by using iChat. Now that you are done screen sharing, how do you end the screen share and return to normal iChat (text or video)? The only way I can figure out is to quit the iChat session completely and re-establish contact. This isn't always quite the best thing when the other person is a Mac newbie.
Question #2: What options does a PC user have to doing a video chat with a Mac user using iChat?
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