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Version history: Mac Screen Sharing

Changes, improvements, and fixes across releases of Mac Screen Sharing.

Back to the app pageCurrent version 1.0.4

Version 1.0.4

Improvements

  • The troubleshooting pages have addresses in their own language. The Spanish page about a black screen lived at /es/troubleshooting/bildschirm-bleibt-schwarz/ — a German address on a Spanish page, made of words a Spanish reader would never type. It is now /es/troubleshooting/pantalla-negra/, and the same goes for all eight problems in English, French, Spanish and Italian. The German addresses stay exactly as they were. The old addresses forward permanently to the new ones, so a saved link, or a search result that still shows one, keeps arriving at the right page.

Bug fixes

  • An address without its final slash no longer sends some programs round in a circle. A program that does not remember that this site only speaks HTTPS — a script, for instance — was forwarded back and forth between two addresses and never arrived. It now arrives on the first forward.

Version 1.0.3

New features

  • A link to the legal notice, in the footer of every page. In the language of the page, pointing at the operator's own imprint at sourcecloud.com.

Improvements

  • The appearance switch is three symbols instead of three words. A sun, a crescent moon and a half-filled circle for “follow the system”. Hovering names them, and a screen reader still reads the same words as before. They are drawn in the page like everything else here — no icon font, no request to anybody else's server.

Version 1.0.2

Improvements

  • The padlock in the drawings looks like a padlock. On macOS Monterey and older, nothing can be changed until the lock at the bottom left of the window is opened — the step says so in words and points at it. In the picture beside those words it was a plain orange tile. It now has a body, a shackle and a keyhole, so the thing you are told to look for is the thing you can see.

Version 1.0.1

Improvements

  • The drawn windows have a clean frame and clean corners. The outline used to be painted first and then covered by the title bar and the sidebar, so it was there down the sides and missing across the top; and being drawn exactly on the edge of the picture, half of it fell outside and was cut off, which left the lower corners looking frayed. The outline is now drawn last, over everything, and everything inside the window is cut to the window's own rounded shape. Easier to see once the drawings got bigger, which is how it was noticed.
  • The drawn settings windows are as large as the text beside them. They were capped at less than two thirds of the width they had, which put their labels at about nine pixels against sixteen for the sentence above them — small, for the one part of a page that a reader is meant to match against their own screen. On a laptop or a tablet the names in the drawing are now exactly the size of the surrounding text. On a phone the drawing still has to fit a narrow column and stays smaller than that.

Version 1.0.0

New features

  • First release. A hundred and twelve guides: eight meeting applications across seven generations of macOS, and for each of them the two things that are actually different — being seen, and being controlled. Every page carries the exact click path for that one combination rather than a general description with exceptions attached.
  • The settings are quoted in the language of the Mac being configured, set separately from the language of the page, because a helper and the person they are helping frequently do not share one. Every name comes from Apple's own localised documentation rather than from a translation of the English — which matters more than it sounds: Apple renamed the settings application between Monterey and Ventura in English, French, Spanish and Italian, but not in German, so anything translated out of one language gets at least one of the others wrong. Your own translation appears beside a setting only where the two differ.
  • Seeing and controlling are told apart. Screen recording to be seen, accessibility to be controlled — the distinction that most failed screen shares come down to, and the reason so many end with “I can see you, but the mouse won't move.” The remote-control section adds only what the section above it did not already cover.
  • The macOS version is worked out on the recipient's machine. Chromium reports it outright. Safari has reported a frozen system version since Big Sur, so its own version narrows the answer to two or three and the page asks instead of guessing; Firefox reveals nothing and the page says so rather than pretending. An iPad in desktop mode looks exactly like a Mac apart from its touch screen, and is told to open the link on the Mac instead.
  • A page for the person doing the helping. Choose the application and the goal and get a link that resolves the macOS version at the other end — deliberately not the address of the page you are reading, which would pin the recipient to *your* version and is the mistake this whole guide exists to undo. With it: a message ready to paste into a chat window in the recipient's language, a QR code, and a checklist that prints on one page. The link is shown in full and never shortened, because it asks somebody to change a security setting and they should be able to read where it goes.
  • Eight pages for what goes wrong. Black screen, pointer that will not move, application missing from the list, switch that will not move, permission that seems to vanish after a restart, only one window shared, second display missing, and a Mac managed by an employer. Each says what is actually happening before it gives an instruction, and links into the guide for the exact combination.
  • The traps sit in the steps, not in a footnote. An application does not appear in the list until it has asked for the permission once — which is why the instructions begin by starting the share and cancelling it. Quitting with Command-Q is not the same as closing the window. Zoom's entry is called “zoom.us”. Remote control can be switched off account-wide in the Zoom portal, and then there is nothing to repair on the Mac at all. Microsoft Teams disables handing over control whenever its own macOS content sharing setting is on.
  • Buttons for the fiddly parts. A link that opens System Settings at the exact pane, with the click path always beside it in case it does not; a copy button for that path in the other Mac's language, for pasting into a chat window; and, for a permission that was granted and still does not work, the correct tccutil line with the right identifier for that application.
  • The settings windows are drawn rather than screenshotted, so they follow light and dark and carry their labels in the language of the Mac being configured — neither of which a screenshot can do. The title bar shows the path that got you there, which a real window does not, because a picture of where you land is only half of what somebody needs.
  • Five languages, complete or not at all. German, English, French, Spanish and Italian. Light, dark and automatic. Every page is delivered as finished HTML and reads with JavaScript switched off; where scripting runs, the headline doubles as the switch between applications and macOS versions. Nothing is loaded from anywhere else — no analytics, no external fonts, no requests after the page has arrived.