Fix for anyone unable to use screen sharing

OMG THIS WORKED!!!!!!! I can't thank you enough. This morning, out of the blue, screen sharing stopped working for me. I could still access hard drives on my other macs but screen sharing just got hung up & wouldn't do anything. I went to System Prefs, signed out of mobile me, and BOOM -- it works again. YOU. ARE. AWESOMESAUCE.

Thank you so much.

Seriously, I want to send you a fruit basket or something. THANK YOU.

Thanks, I too was stuck screensharing since afternoon, and post helped me fix it thanks a ton!

Thanks, that was really helpful :-)

Hooray! I was in a panic because I use screen sharing almost every day and it suddenly stopped working last night.

I have a Lion target machine and a Snow Leopard client and a Leopard client. I tried reinstalling Lion on the target machine, and then, when that didn't work, I used Time Machine to reset to the previous day, but it STILL didn't work. I was getting really nervous. Then I thought that maybe something about MobileMe was happening, I just couldn't figure out what to do about it.

Found this article and BOOM, it's fixed. You're my hero!

🙂🙂 THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU 🙂🙂

I have been searching and searching for why it had broke. I can not believe this is what has been giving me a headache and problems. It is such an odd and obsure reason for why Screen Sharing stops working! 😮

I love you I love you I love you!!!!

Days and days trying to figure this one out. Mystery solved! Thank you so much...

Thank you. I never would have found this.

This is greatly appreciated! Why couldn't Apple publish this info along with all of their iWork warnings etc. 100 points to geocomNZ, minus 500 to Apple!

This happened to me the very day I got a new router - so I was about to spend an entire day trying to troubleshoot the wrong device.

Should have known it had something to do with iCloud (<--- you SUCK).

Thanks OP!!!

I just wish I had Mobile Me to sign out of and get screen sharing back. It's been missing since lion. get file sharing, no screen sharing, no how, no way.

@Jay Gamel specifically, but to anyone who is having problems with Screen Sharing and thinks that since they don't use MobileMe that it must be something else ..

I have never used MobileMe, not even the free trial.

When I saw this post, I looked at the Mobile Me pref pane and since I had never logged in, there was no way to sign out, so I kept looking elsewhere.

Hours later, I read this email again and saw how timely it was, so I went back and looked again.

Even though I had never signed in, my AppleID was pre-populated in the Member Name field.

As soon as I cleared out this field, Screen Sharing started working again.

So, not only should you make sure you are signed out, but you should wipe out any information in either the Member Name or Password field.

I also noticed that, even after I solved it, as I continued to look at the issue, at some point the Member Name re-populated and sharing stopped working until I cleared it out again.

I have no Mobile Me preference pane at all. I'm runnin Mt. Lion 10.8 on both machines. I only have an iCloud pref pane and I need to be signed into it. Believe me, I've signed out and in a dozen times -- every time I change the configuration at either end.

The best solution so far: buy ShareTool 2 for $30 bucks. It's easy to set up, no fiddling with routers, and is very fast, allowing access to entire networks, something I could never get ARD or BTMM to do. Mac has a long way to go to get it's network tools working right. Kagi gets it right the first time, and cheap, too.

Many, many thanks for posting the tip. As others have noted, I wasn't signed in but my username was populated in MobileMe preferences (10.6.8).

I also used Keychain access to remove any references to .Mac, Mobile Me etc. in my login keychain (if you've upgraded a machine, these could be me.com, mac.com, etc.). My AFP and screen sharing connections are now restored.

Just FYI: previously, the connection would *eventually* work - after clicking Connect As... or Share Screen... in a Finder window, the Connecting to "servername". window would appear for around 2-3 minutes before eventually allowing a login.

Thanks again.