Quick VNC for MacOS

Suppose you're at a MacOS desktop and you need a VNC viewer (but eventually this parenthetical comment will say something constructive about Remote Access for Windows); this happens reasonably often. While there are several fine VNC clients for MacOS, my experience is their installation is a bit "fiddly" (since first writing this, CL has become a fan of VNCThing [L1 ]). In particular, most (?) (now?) depend on X. For instantantaneous gratification--if you already have a wish installed, such as TclTkAquaBI--all you need are tkvnc's two source files. Fantastic!

23sep04 jcw - With TclTkAquaBI, you can also do:

    /Library/Tcl/bin/sdx update tkvnc.kit

Then double-click on the "tkvnc.kit" file you just fetched and you're off.

All you need is a tclkit and sdx, any platform. It all hinges on the fact that sdx is able to fetch and update starkits from the sdarchive repository, which contains quite a few apps & tools.

CL responds: of course! even better! And, yes, incidentally, this is all equally true for Windows or Unix (or, with a bit of straining, OpenVMS). My subconscious was involved in a fragile calculation that somehow concluded tkvnc was a particular advantage for MacOS; I now retract that, and will be ready to exploit tkvnc (and other sdarchive goodies) on all platforms.

DAS - it's also worth knowing that recent MacOS X contains a built-in VNC server under the guise of Apple Remote Desktop Client 2, which you can turn on under System Prefs -> Sharing (you have to enable VNC viewing under ARD Access Privileges).

BR Thanks for that hint ;-). I had to try it out immediately. My OS had only an older ARD version, though. I had to install the ARD Client update to 2.1 (a gratis download from Apple) to get the VNC server function. Another note for the configuration of the VNC client: ARD uses the display number 0.


CL now likes TightVNC for day-to-day work, but still occasionally uses "VNC Viewer for Macintosh" along with tkvnc.kit.


Category Internet Category Mac