Q: Why is Messages screen sharing icon grayed out?

@Barney - no, that's not where the feature is found.

@ Linc:

No, not Bonjour.

Here's an article that shows what I'm trying to do:

http://appletoolbox.com/2014/11/screen-sharing-osx-yosemite/

This new feature is also documented in Messages Help. Go to 'Audio or video chat, or share your screen' > 'Share your screen'

One piece of info I forgot to mention is that using this exact procedure, I was able to share screens with a remote computer a few days ago.

In other words, it worked exactly as described in Messages Help and in the article linked above.

Isn't Bonjour just for local networks? If that's correct, then since that computer was remote (i.e., accessed via the internet, not on my local network), this cannot be Bonjour.

Barney - When I click the down arrow on people in the list, the screen sharing option is only present with the person with whom I've already successfully done Messages screen sharing. With my mom, it only shows her email address and phone number.

Since the down-arrrow option was not mentioned in either the Messages help document or the article I linked to, I'm assuming that you can't use that method to initiate conversations the first time.

If I'm wrong about any of this, please correct me.

Otherwise, I'd appreciate it if further replies were directly related to resolving the problem I described in the original post.

Barney - I don't know why this would be different - I'm just speculating that it's different based on what I've observed. In any case, the method you described with the arrow doesn't resolve my problem.

Linc - The procedure in that article is exactly as I described in my original post. However, I think the article is erroneous when it says 'You can't share screens using Yahoo! or iMessage', in that Yosemite now allows the latter. I suspect that sentence was just copied from a previous support document.

>According to the current help for Messages, screen share over iMessage is still not supported,

What exactly do you mean by 'the current help for Messages'?

In a previous post, I described how to navigate to the specific page in Messages help that says this is possible, and, to repeat what I said in my previous post, I'm pretty sure the help document on the Apple web site is incorrect. (I still have Apple Care and will call to verify if I have time.)

Further, see this link, which is to the Apple web page describing new features in Messages for Yosemite:

http://www.apple.com/osx/all-features/#messages

Here's a screenshot of that page.

This is the feature I've described in this thread.

I'd appreciate it if further posts in this thread would stick directly to the issue I described in my original post - the greyed-out screen sharing icon in the 'Details' pop-up menu.

If you haven't had that specific problem, then please don't post here.

Thanks!

Update:

A senior AppleCare agent generously and patiently spent over an hour on the phone with me and my mom trying to help. Unfortunately, he couldn't really answer the questions 1) why was the screen sharing icon grayed out and 2) does the Messages-based screen sharing icon represent a new screen sharing method independent of AIM, Google, etc.? (He did say that he'd heard that due to changes in Google's system that their accounts no longer work with Messages.)

However, today I did the following test:

1. I deleted my AIM account from Messages and had my mom do the same. The result is that we each only have two items in the Accounts window of Messages: an iMessage account (signed in with our Apple IDs) and a Bonjour account.

2. Clicking on the Details menu, the screen sharing icon was available for both of us. It was not grayed out.

3. We each tried both options - requesting to share the other's screen and inviting the other to share our screens. Sometimes the other person would receive the invitation notice, and sometimes not.

In the cases where we were able to accept the invitations, we were sometimes briefly able to establish connections, but before we could see each other's screens, we'd get a message that the other person had terminated the session, despite the fact that neither of us ever actually did that.

A couple of times, I got a message telling me to make sure screen sharing is enabled in System Preferences in the other person's computer. This is odd because 1) the documentation says that this screen sharing method is independent of that setting; and 2) in any case, screen sharing is already enabled in Sys Prefs on my mom's MacBook Pro.

Based on this test, I still think that the screen sharing icon in the Details menu is part of a new method of screen sharing introduced in Yosemite, which does not require a third party account.

However, it doesn't work, it's poorly documented, and Apple's staff haven't been informed about it.

By the way, we both checked settings in Connection Doctor, and everything was fine (no bandwidth limits, etc).

Later, we both added AIM accounts back to Messages and were able to share screens through the buddy list without incident.