In mac OS 26 Apple have made screen sharing accessible. We can log into a remote mac and control it with voiceover on our machine whilst the host remains silent.
For several years I've used Jump Desktop to control my server which is an M2 Mac mini and it's given me no end of issues. This is so slick, full keyboard control and nicely done.
The exciting thing here is, instead of buying a super powerful macbook pro in the future, I can get a beefy mac studio or even mac mini, and control it through my m2 macbook air, making the whole thing much, much cheaper. I've also got the advantage of having pretty fast internet at home but when away, when internet is poor, I can remotely log in and manipulate my audio described library for use in infuse which is something I can't do when the internet is flaky.
I know I do complain about apple... A lot!... But they've done a really good job here. I also hope it means we will see more job openings for blind support.
Comments
It was already accessible…
It was already accessible although really not the best experience, but yeah I didn't try it myself but was expecting high quality. They are competing with RIM, but as long as it's done well and for good reasons nobody will complain. Now I hope we can get the same experience with iphone miroring one day as what we want is essencially screen shared like experience with iphone VO sound transferred to the mac and the keyboard presses transffered to the iphone. I've filed a feedback after seeing the screen sharing category in Tahoe.
Sharing
Is the sharing permanent? If not, apple need to do so. This way someone who knows well about VO, can share setting.
Impressive
I've been ranting about inability to effectively control my colleague's computers over teams call for years now. They can control mine, I can't control theirs. If it comes to Teams, This changes everything. Especially the part where they ask me, 'Can you see what I’m seeing?' and I say, 'No'. Go figure out how to make me see first!
@Oliver, yes I know.
But, this gives me excuse to rant to Microsoft about their current screen-share. As is, Teams during calls is so laggy that I don't think even if they implement, it would be any good.
I am curious how Apple would have done the technical implementation. I am guessing that Screen-share app is using accessibility APIs to capture information on whatever focused item on the machine being controled. Passing that along-side the video and audio data won't be that much of increase in data being exchanged, and, VO on remote machine would be simply picking up the information coming along.
Screen Sharing
I managed to get this to work by opening the screen sharing app and entering my friend's email address. It's very impressive, but I couldn't hear audio. How does that work? How do you create unattended sessions between Macs? I'd test that, but I only have a single Mac. This should have been done a decade ago, but better late than never. Once again, we see how Apple can do things right when they really want to.