Mavericks screen sharing is slow

I have similar a "performance" issue when connecting from my Mac Pro (Lion) to my Mac Mini (Mavericks). I can move the mouse on my Mac Pro and watch it take about 15-20 secs to move (catch up) on the Mac Mini.

My Mac Mini has an attached Apple Display. (I had problems long ago trying to run the Mac Mini headless-- has this really been fixed?) When I turn off scaling, the screen in screen sharing goes solid black).

I don't have any such issues between my Mac Pro and a Macbook (Snow Leopard) in either direction.

I have this same issue with a Mavericks Mac mini (2013) model. I used my Mac Mini with a headless display and remoted in from a 2012 Macbook Retina with Mavericks (all with the latest updates, utilizing Back to Mac through iCloud). The screen resolution on the mini seemed to be locked at a low resolution (800x600?) and then the mouse cursor would take 30-60 seconds before it became remotely usable.

Remedy that I have used so far is plugged in a monitor that I leave turned off. After the monitor is recognized by the Mac Mini, the resolution improves to match the monitor's resolution and the mouse is immediately responsive remotely. I am not sure why this is, but I would like to leave my Mac mini headless for security reasons and keep prying eyes from seeing what is on my screen. Never had any issues before upgrading everything to Mavericks as Mountain Lion worked headless with no problems.

Let me know if any one figures out why or if Apple finds a resolution as this appears to be a change from Mountain Lion to Mavericks.

I have a Mac Mini 2009 which is connected to a TV via HDMI. I use a MacBook Pro to share the Mac Mini's screen. I also experience serious lag when scrolling on the Mac Mini via the MacBook trackpad. It doesn't matter whether the display is set to scale or not. Both computers are running Mavericks, but it's been this way since 10.7 or 10.8. It worked without this issue on 10.6. It's frustrating. I don't have room to connect a monitor to the mac mini. Any other suggestions?

Same steup as Kate13, but my Mac Mini is 2012. Screen share is unusable. Microsoft Remote Destop running on same Mac Pro is awesome. I connect to Windows 7 laptop on same network as the Mini. I made the switch to Apple products since they appered to be superior to MSFT, but I can easly switch back.

My setup is just like Kate13's except that I am using a MacBook Air to share the screen of my Mac Mini 2009. I have the same problem. There's a crazy lag that makes simple things take minutes.

In my case too, it doesn't matter whether I have it set to scale. It's really annoying. Recently, I have been using an app on my iPhone to control the Mac Mini but that's not as convenient as sharing the screen with my MacBook Air.

I'm having the same problem, screen sharing an ethernet-connected Mac Pro via my MacBook Pro, both have OS X 10.9.1 on them and it's so freaking insanely frustrating that it's unusuable. I hope a patch or something will be pushed out. It's seriously bad. The mouse cursor just randomly stops moving for 10 seconds, every few minutes! Scaling, no scaling, any resolution, Full quality or Adaptive quality - nothing seems to do the trick. 😟

Thanks everyone for sharing your information. I've just started using Screen Sharing between my iMac and my Mac Mini Server. Both are connected ethernet and it takes an extreme amout of time to even connect. I'm glad to know it's not just something I'm experiencing.

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Feedback

Hi

today i used a Snow Leopard (10.6.8) client to connect to an Maverick server.

Result:

CPU usage on the server : Client : Server : UI feeling

40% : Maverick : Maverick : awfull slow

3% : Snow Leo : Maverick : Ok quite good

The connection took quite long. I assume it is a protokoll issue.

I will now start looking how the protocol conversation can be tweaked.

Any ideas ?

Yours

add on 5 Minutes later :-)

Just changed the setting from high quality to adjusted quality and the speed came also back to a Maverick to Maverick connection. Here the CPU usage of screensharind went down to max 10% (window movement) and 3% (idle).

Mmh looks like that this was at least my issue.

Just did!

I will also send feedback to Apple, I have 2 Mac Minis (same vintage 2011) one running 10.6.8 and one running 10.9.2. You would think that the Mavericks machine would be as good or better than the one running Snow Leapard, but it's not.

I am talking strictly using screen sharing from a Macbook Pro running Lion, when I screen share with the Snow Leapard macine it is perfect as if it were the MBP itself. When I screen share wtih the Mavericks machine it is useable but very laggy and slow to refresh consistantly.

I have tried all the tricks I can find in multiple forums but still have poor performace out of the Mavericks Mac.

I think there is definatly some issue with Mavericks and unfortunatly we are at the mercy of Apple resolving it.😟

The RealVNC server for Mac has very good performance on Mavericks, not matter what client is used. However, recently it started to lock up the Mavericks machine after a few minutes, which wasn't happening initially. I think it has something to do with the power settings turning off the display, but I haven't debugged it.

I have found my solution! I have an old Mac laptop running x.5.8 that I'm using to share the screen with the Mac mini. No slowness at all! My issue occurs when the computer grabbing the screen is running Mavericks.

My solutions worked as long as I had a monitor hooked up to my Mac mini the. Screen sharing was flawless from my MacBook Pro with Mavericks. Unfortunately the issue seems to be tied to when I didn't have the monitor attached, which is my ideal configuration.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work if your monitor is a TV which uses the HDMI port. I tried just plugging in the mini dvi adaptor, but without a monitor attached, it made no difference.