How Do I Remote Into My Mac From My Windows Computer?

You need a VNC client, and some method of networking to your work Mac.

On the Mac you need to enable System Preferences -> Sharing -> Screen Sharing, then click Computer Settings and set a VNC password.

There are several VNC clients avaiable for Windows, TightVNC, UltraVNC, RealVNC, etc...

The only issue using a 3rd party VNC client with the Mac OS X build-in VNC server is that the Mac OS X server does not always play nice with 3rd party clients. If you find you can connect, but are having problems, you could consider disabling the System Preferences -> Sharing -> Screen Sharing, and installing the free Vine Server which does play nicely with 3rd party VNC clients.

VNC is an industry standard remote screen sharing protocol. Where as Windows RDP is Microsoft proprietary.

So Apple does not need to write Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, iPad, IPhone, Android, etc... VNC clients, as a 3rd party generic VNC client can be used.

There are also cross platform utilities such as TeamViewer.com and LogMeIn.com, both of which have free options for personal use. These 2 utilities can be good at accessing systems behind home routers. Corporate firewalls may or may not be handled depending on whether the company blocks either of these services.

Logmein.com dosn't work on Mac anymore. You can see many other forums others having the same issue recently. It has not worked now for several months. I don't know if they gave up supporting Mac or they are just asleep and don't care. But one thing is for sure, you can scratch logmein.com off the list of realistic option for remoting to a Mac machine.

Team Viewer as I remember is not firewall friendly. Good luck finding one that works up to Apple standards. They are all hack arounds and nothing that just works hassle free as should be an available option.

Try google chrome remote desktop. It is not firewall or proxy freindly but if you don't have that to contend with, I read that is suppose to work for mac.

As far as an official Apple solution, they have Back to my Mac, which allows one Mac to remote into another Mac, it is simply configured and seems to "just work."

I don't think that they're really concerned with an "official" solution for letting a PC remote in to a Mac, because why would they? That's likely of low importance for them, and conversely I imagine Microsoft certainly isn't concerned with an "official" solution for letting Macs remote into PC. And if your answer for that is RDP as part of Office 2011 for Mac, well, if that's "official" it's a pretty sad effort.

But for other solutions, TeamViewer works well and I would probably promote that as the easiest tool, I use it often. Also, 3rd party VNC apps will generally work pretty well too.

Hope that helps!

I don't know why but team viewer client seems to have more issues connecting from places with firewalls, policies and proxies. The logmein (knock on wood) for now, just works without any issues from the hotel or anywhere.

I do have an update to anyone using gotomypc and logmein. I got it working again by disabling sleep for the monitors only. That has been the issue this entire time. Just select a black screen saver rather than let your monitor automatically go to sleep. The issue is now known for the new mac os with no fix on the horizon. Hopefully that will change.

It is not the best solution since you are waisting power consumption powering the monitor 24/7.

Assuming a 24 inch monitor uses 35 watts, it cost about 7 bux more a year to leave the monitor on versus using sleep mode for the monitor.

Another way of looking at it is it's a half a barrel of oil to keep thing going 24/7 all year.

I have always used nomachine (www.nomachine.com) with great success. Works in Windows, Mac and Linux. Good luck!

I have been using this software for years. https://www.netopia.com/software/products/tb2/

It works great and I'm running on the latest Macbook Pro. Configuration is a snap post back here if you have questions. The link will warn about certificates but this application is owned and/or/was by Motorolla. It works great for me.

Also a thing of note is that RDP is constantly criticized as it comes setup by default on some versions of Windows Pro causing it listen on port 3389 for incoming requests out of the box. If the user does not have a password set up any hacker can walk right in, literally. I wish someone from Apple would chime in, but the reason they allow only VNC is that if it is configured correctly it can be more secure than RDP. Some of the more savvy network guys can correct me on this, but I think the best way is setting up a VPN between the two machines (anyOS) and then VNC.

Generic VNC is not encrypted, so unless you are using VNC over a VPN session or over an SSH secure tunnel across the internet, it is not very secure.

Mac OS X Back-to-My-Mac is encrypted as well as a secure authentication. Screen Sharing outside of Back-to-My-Mac using a secure authentication, and via the Screen Sharing app, you can set a preference that encrypts the screen sharing session as well.

TeamViewer.com is also uses secure authentication and encrypted sessions.

I know nothing about RDP. I do use Microsoft's Remote Desktop Mac RDP client at work, but that is over the corporate network, and I'm not worried about hostile intent in that environment.

Across the internet, I ONLY use encrypted channels, either fully encrypted Screen Sharing app, VPN sessions to work, or SSH Tunnels.