Apple Remote Desktop session instead of screen sharing

Hello Ben,

Thank you for reaching out to us regarding this,

I'm not sure I fully understand the issue in this case, to clarify, You have a Macbook with 3 Displays to which you are connecting from your iOS device using RDM iOS, however it is not possible for your to see the multiple displays is that correct?

For your second issue, do you mean that using an RDP Session instead of ARD works as expected from your iOS device or is this from your Windows workstation?

Let me know,

Best regards,

Hello

Further to what Sam wrote, I do think I understand what you're asking for. Apple Remote Desktop / Screen Sharing does fundamentally do things differently to RDP (like VNC, you're connecting directly to the remote console, not a new session inside the console).

The protocol does allow selecting which remote display you want to view. I discussed it with the mobile team and see that the screen selection is not implemented on mobile (it is on desktop RDM). We''ll create a ticket to add that and update this post once some news is available.

Locking the remote screen is a hidden feature of the ARD protocol, and again we support it on desktop. Coincidentally this was just asked in the Android forum and we've already got a ticket opened for that on iOS as well. Again, we'll update this post once there's some new information.

Thanks for your patience and if you have further questions or comments please don't hesitate to post back

Kind regards,

Hi Samuel and Richard,

Sorry I might was not clear enough.
I only brought up RDP as example that worked good for me. (And I know it's a different protocol.)

So I have two issues with ARD:

1. I have 3 displays locally when I work on my Macbook. I have programs running on each. For example:

• Display 1 - browser
• Display 2 - file manager
• Display 3 - text editor

When I connect with RDM I can only see 1 display. If it is Display 1 I can only see the browser and not the other two applications.
I want to see all application on my only display.

This works with RDP as I expect. RDP uses sessions: I have a local session with 3 displays and a remote session with only 1 display. When I open the remote session it moves all the programs to the only 1 existing display. When I log in my local session (that logs out the remote one) I have 3 displays again.


2. The second issue is that I only want to have 1 active session (or as you wrote locking screen). With RDP, when I log in remotely it logs out locally, and when I log in locally it logs out remotely. So it ensures that I can access only once at the same time. So it makes sure that no one can peek my screen locally while I use remotely.


I hope I could describe in a clearer way this time.

Thank you,
Ben

Hello Ben

Thanks for the exposition.

Sadly, the things you describe are just the nature of the protocol used for Apple Remote Desktop (it's actually built on top of RFB (VNC), which also works the same way), and largely lie outside our control.

Perhaps you could find a third-party screen sharing software that suits your needs better, or even an RDP server (I'm not sure if there are any viable RDP servers for macOS, however).

At best, to try and meet the requirements, we can:

• Allow you to select which remote screen to view in the session
• Allow you to lock the remote display, so no-one can peek the screen locally

We've already got tickets to address these items, which are generally useful. However it's simply not possible to address your other points with ARD.

Please, let me know if you have any questions or comments

Kind regards,

Hello Richard,

Thank you for your answer, now I understand.
Thanks for opening those tickets, they are helpful anyway.

One idea/question (it might not possible either): every program has an option in macOS under the Window menu: 'Move to XXX' (XXX is the display, e.g.: Built-in Retina Display).
Is it possible that at the time of ARD connection RDM sends some control signal to every application to move them to Display X? If I'm not mistaken ARD can do some management, not only screen share/control, so it's might be possible.

Thank you,
Ben

Hi Ben

What you're asking is technically feasible, but it's unlikely something that we can fix on our side.

Indeed, the Apple Remote Desktop protocol encompasses more than just screen sharing. There are some management functions and notably, there is the ability to run scripts in the user context, and this sounds like something scriptable. However, the protocol is extremely large and complicated, and it's totally closed (closed source / closed specs). We have an implementation on Windows that's based on reverse engineering the protocol, but it's very heavy weight (it's a whole out-of-band communication setup, not simply extra features on top of screen sharing - it's almost better to think of screen sharing and the remote management as two separate protocols).

Basically, like I said, it might be technically possible but it's not feasible from an engineering perspective.

I might suggest, if you can figure out how to do this using AppleScript, it could be straightforward to use automator to make that something you can easily invoke after logging in remotely.

Please, let me know if you have any other questions or comments

Kind regards,

Thank you Richard,

I appreciate your explanation.

Best regards,
Ben