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Connecting When You're Away (Macintosh)

Connecting back to your computer when you are away requires some configuration. Luckily, if your Mac is running OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.81 or later, Screens Connect makes it a breeze.

Screens Connect for Mac

Screens Connect lets you connect to your Mac when you're away from home or the office. It takes care of the messy setup you need to perform on your router in order to make your Mac accessible outside the local network it is connected to.

While Screens Connect isn't required to use Screens, it offers some advanced features that make Screens even better:

Improved Keyboard Support

Screens Connect provides information about the currently used keyboard on your Mac so that Screens knows which keyboard mapping to use, even if the current keyboard on your device differs.

Improved Shortcut Gestures

Screens uses the default shortcuts for Mission Control, Show All Application Windows, Move Left/Right a Space and Spotlight. It can provide the current hot keys used on your Mac so that Screens knows which shortcuts to use.

Installing and Configuring

Important! Make sure that the initial setup of your computer has been completed before your read on.

From your Mac, go to https://screensconnect.com and download the Screens Connect package. Then:

sc-sign-in

You'll find more details about configuring Screens Connect in the bundled documentation, either from the sc-help-button button or the system menu → Help.

Using Screens Connect with Screens

sc-sign-in-ios

With Screens running on your iOS device, follow these steps:

Now that you are signed in, you should see every Mac or Windows PC you've installed Screens Connect on. The antenna icon next to the name means that the Screens Connect service is enabled on that Mac or Windows PC:

sc-signed-in-ios

The next time you connect to your Mac or Windows PC, Screens will determine if your computer is available locally. If that's not the case, Screens will query our Screens Connect server to get it's location and then connect to it. This is all seamless and you shouldn't see a difference!

Connecting Remotely without Screens Connect

If for some reason it is not possible to use Screens Connect on your Mac or PC, you can follow these instructions: