Access your Mac from another room, or from anywhere: the right method for each case

Controlling one Mac from another in the same house, or pulling up your home Mac from a hotel room, are two completely different technical problems with different solutions. macOS ships a genuinely good built-in tool for the first one. For the second, Apple used to have an answer, discontinued it years ago, and hasn't replaced it, which is the single biggest source of confusion in this space.

Same house, same Wi-Fi: built-in Screen Sharing

If both Macs are on the same local network, wired or wireless, macOS's built-in Screen Sharing handles this in about two minutes with nothing to install. This has been part of macOS for close to twenty years and remains the simplest route for exactly this case.

Setting it up

On the Mac you want to access (the one that will stay put):

1. Open System Settings > General > Sharing.
2. Turn on Screen Sharing.
3. Choose who can connect: All Users lets anyone with an account on that Mac in, or pick specific users and groups for tighter control.
4. Note the Mac's name or local address shown in the Sharing pane; you'll need it from the other side.

Connecting from the other Mac

You have two equally valid routes:

• Through Finder: open a Finder window, find the other Mac's name under Locations or Network in the sidebar, and click Share Screen.
• Through the Screen Sharing app directly: press Command-Space, type Screen Sharing, open it, and connect using the Mac's name or address.

You'll either log in automatically if both Macs share an Apple ID, or be prompted for the target Mac's username and password. Once connected, you can view and fully control the other Mac's screen, with quality that adapts automatically to your network conditions by default.

One setting to check: Remote Management and Screen Sharing cannot both be active at once on the same Mac. If Screen Sharing won't turn on, check whether Remote Management is enabled in the same Sharing pane and turn it off first.

Just need the Terminal, not the screen?

If what you actually want is command-line access rather than the full graphical screen, Remote Login is lighter and faster:

1. System Settings > General > Sharing, turn on Remote Login instead of (or alongside) Screen Sharing.
2. From the other Mac's Terminal: ssh username@mac-local-address

This also works to the same local network only, same as Screen Sharing, unless combined with one of the from-anywhere options below.

From outside your home network

This is where it gets genuinely harder, and it's worth understanding why before picking a tool. Built-in Screen Sharing relies on Bonjour to discover the other Mac, and Bonjour does not cross a router. From a coffee shop or hotel Wi-Fi, there is nothing on that network for your Mac to find, no matter how correctly you configured Screen Sharing at home.

Your realistic options, in order of how much setup they require:

1. A VPN back to your home network. If your router supports running a VPN server, connecting to it first makes your traveling Mac appear to be on your home network again, at which point ordinary Screen Sharing works exactly as it does at home. This is the most "correct" solution technically, but router setup varies widely and isn't trivial for everyone.
2. A mesh VPN service such as Tailscale. These create a private network between your devices regardless of where each one physically is, without router configuration. Install the client on both Macs, sign in to the same account on each, and they can reach each other directly, including through Screen Sharing, as if on the same LAN.
3. A dedicated remote-access service built specifically to solve this gap, generally requiring an account and a client app on both ends, with NAT traversal handled for you. These typically also require granting Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions on the host Mac, the same permissions any screen-sharing tool needs.
4. Third-party remote-desktop apps like Chrome Remote Desktop, AnyDesk, or TeamViewer. These work cross-platform and don't require a VPN, at the cost of running a separate client and, for some, routing your session through the vendor's own servers rather than connecting directly.

Avoid port forwarding as a DIY solution unless you specifically know what you're doing. Opening a port directly to Screen Sharing or SSH on your home router exposes that service to the entire internet, not just to you, and is a meaningfully worse security posture than any of the options above.

Why this got harder after Back to My Mac

Apple used to solve exactly this problem natively. Back to My Mac, part of iCloud, let you find and reach your own Mac from anywhere using just your Apple ID, no router configuration required. Apple discontinued it starting with macOS Mojave in 2018 and has not shipped a direct replacement since. If you've used a Mac for a long time and remember this being simpler, that memory is accurate; Apple genuinely removed a feature here rather than you forgetting how it worked.

Your options, compared

The short version

• Two Macs on the same Wi-Fi: use built-in Screen Sharing, turned on in System Settings > General > Sharing. Nothing to install.
• Terminal-only access on the same network: Remote Login (SSH) is lighter than full screen sharing.
• From outside your home network, built-in Screen Sharing cannot find your Mac on its own, because it relies on Bonjour, which doesn't cross a router.
• A mesh VPN like Tailscale is the lowest-effort way to reach your Mac from anywhere without router configuration.
• Never forward Screen Sharing or SSH ports directly to the internet; it's a real security risk, not just an inconvenience.