When Leopard was released, one of the most enticing new features was Back to My Mac, a tool that made it possible to access your home computer remotely—including remote control of your desktop and access to your files—no matter where you are. The catch: It requires a $100 yearly subscription to the lackluster .Mac service. Right now I’m working from my laptop in Austin, and I’ve got the same full access to my home PC in Los Angeles as Back to My Mac offers, but I didn’t spend a dime on .Mac to get it. That’s because all of the tools you need to roll your own Back to My Mac are already built into Leopard for free out of the box—you just need to know how to access them.
Macworld has discovered that there’s a lot more functionality hidden in Leopard’s new Screen Sharing application (yes, it’s actually just a normal application and not some obscure service), and unlocking it is just a matter of a couple of simple Terminal commands. First, you’ll want to find the Screen Sharing app in /System/Library/CoreServices and drag it into your Dock or copy it to your Applications folder for easier access. Once you do that, fire up Terminal and enter the following (one-line) command, which will provide easy-to-read shortcuts for connecting to any local computer: defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing ShowBonjourBrowser_Debug 1
Now run the Screen Sharing app and you should see an interface similar to what you see in the screenshot above. But that’s not all. The next Terminal tweak adds toolbar buttons to the Screen Sharing window to control the quality of your session, window control, and a few other useful tweaks. More »
