Cannot get X11 forwarding to work between 2 mac machines on images, pdfs, textfiles, etc

I have 2 mac machines, a macBook pro running mojave and an iMac pro running big sur. After installing xQuartz, I can ssh from the mac book to the iMac with the -X option. X11 forwarding works for things like xclock and xlogo, but when I try to display pdfs, or images, or even text files, on the local mac book they get displayed on the remote iMac. The DISPLAY variable seems to get set properly, otherwise xclock would not get displayed on the local machine.

Is there something I'm missing, or is what I'm trying to with X11 just not possible? If the latter, will VNC do what I want, or will something else work?

I know Macs have their own proprietary mechanism for doing this, but I want something that will work the same not only from mac to mac, but for mac to linux and for windows to linux. I thought X11 would do the trick.

iMac Pro, macOS 11.3

Posted on Jun 23, 2021 11:43 PM

Top-ranking reply

BobHarris

Level 9

56,819 points

Posted on Jun 24, 2021 8:30 AM

X11 is NOT the macOS display implementation.

If you want to send things over X11, then the app you run on the remote Mac MUST be an X11 based app. Preview is NOT. You would need to find a X11 base PDF display utility if you wanted to have PDF's be displayed over X11

You would be better off using Screen Sharing.

On the Remote Mac enable System Preferences -> Sharing -> Screen Sharing

On the Local Mac Finder -> Go -> Connect to server

Select Browse and find your Remote Mac, or specify vnc://remote_mac_name.local

Mac to Mac Screen Sharing works very well, and it is more secure than plain VNC

View in context

Cannot get X11 forwarding to work between 2 mac machines on images, pdfs, textfiles, etc

Similar questions