Screen sharing to local machine?

I think the answer is no, not in any straightforward way, because Screen Sharing won't let you connect to your own machine. I assume that this it to prevent the infinite recursion that occurs when there is a window on the screen that contains an image of the screen.

You can bypass this protection (Tested with OS X10.6.8) if you have a second Mac, and set it up so Mac 1 shares the screen of Mac 2 and vice versa but the machines rapidly become unusable if the 'infinite windows' situation occurs.

I assume it would be impossible to get hold of a second monitor and plug it into your Mac? That's the only arrangement I'd trust in front of an audience.

C.

Yes with tricks and even then you have issue controlling your mouse.

ssh -L 5903:127.0.0.1:5900 localhost

open vnc://localhost:5903

You will by default be shown BOTH screens and one of them will start the infinite mirror effect, and controlling your mouse will be difficult.

If you can get your mouse to the screen selection button, you may be able to select the projector screen. I had to actually click on the button, then use my arrow keys to move the highlight down to the screen I wanted, because when I tried to move the mouse to the 2nd screen entry, I lost control of the mouse pointer. Using the arrow keys after clicking on the button got me there.

Then I had issues when the mouse moved into the screen sharing view of the other screen, my mouse jumped to the real screen. it was a lot of fun keeping control of my mouse.

But yes you can trick Mac OS X Screen Sharing into doing this using an ssh tunnel (that is what the -L 5903:127.0.0.1:5900 is).

Is this routine a 'solution':

Enter Mission Control

Select the baby Desktop 2

Enter Mission Control again

Now you can drag the window(s) from Desktop 2 onto the baby Desktop 1

Click the baby Desktop 1

With a bit of practice I found I could do this pretty fast.

If this is not slick enough for you, the solution could be an AppleScript that moves all the windows on the non-main screen onto the main screen. The 'OS X Technologies' forum is the place to ask about this.

C.

I realized you can get your mouse under control if you switch Screen Sharing into "looking" only

So once you click on the icon that indicates looking only, then you mouse does not jump around when you move it over the screen sharing screen.

Now it is easy to select the 2nd display, and view it. If you do need to use your Mouse on the 2nd screen, you move it to the Real 2nd screen and just observe it via the Screen Sharing window.

I guess I should have also said that the 2 commands I gave

ssh ...

open vnc://...

are issued from an Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal session, and can be copied and pasted directly from the forum into Terminal.

The ssh -L tunnel makes Screen Sharing think this is to another computer, and not really the Mac you are sitting on.

This does assume you have enabled screen sharing, and that your account is authorized as a screen sharing user.

All I can say is try it and see if it does anything you want.

The bar should ONLY be for your screen sharing copy. It should not affect the 2nd monitor. At worse, if you have a copy of the Mac menu bar on the 2nd monitor, then there will be a small menu bar icon indicating screen sharing is active. But you do not need to have the Apple menu bar on both screen, and if your presentation is taking up the entire screen there should be no menu bar on the 2nd screen.

Again try it and see. You can demo this with ANY 2nd monitor attached to your Mac, it does not need to be a projector. It can be an HDTV, assuming you have the right cables.

If you like it, you can even create an Automator or Applescript app to execute the 2 commands by double clicking on the app you create, as the commands are not really going to need to change.