10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing

In Mac OS X 10.5's Screen Sharing app (the Share Screen button when viewing a Mac in the SHARED section of the Finder's sidebar), you can enable toolbar buttons that will put you in full-screen mode (like Apple Remote Desktop) or allow you to "curtain" (hide the screen of) the remote Mac. You'll need to have the Property List Editor installed, which is part of the Developer Tools included with Leopard. To add the toolbar buttons, you should:

Make sure that you've used the screen sharing feature in Leopard at least once to ensure that a prefs file is created. Quit it if it is running already.
At the command line (in Terminal.app or an xterm) enter the following, all on one line:
```
open -a "Property List Editor.app" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist
```
In the property list editor which should then open, navigate the tree to Root » NSToolbar Configuration ControlToolbar » TB Item Identifiers.
Select one of the children of the TB Item Itentifiers node, and press Add Sibling. I selected the Scale child, which places the toolbar button after the scale/don't scale toolbar button already in the toolbar.
Set the Class of your new entry to String from the pop-up (which it may default to), and the Value to FullScreen.
Press Add Sibling again, set the Class to String, and the Value to Curtain.
Save your changes, and open a new Screen Sharing session.

Start a sharing session and make sure the toolbar is visible (View » Show Toolbar, or click the button at the top right of the screen. You'll see your new Full Screen button in the toolbar. Click it, and you will be switched into a full screen mode very much like the one in Apple Remote Desktop; click the "X" icon in the toolbar to exit full screen mode.

The Curtain button will hide the display on the actual Mac you're sharing, replacing it with a large lock icon and some text you specify.

[robg adds: Hints user bdog noted in a comment on our queue site notes that there are four additional buttons you can add to the toolbar (all of Class String): Quality, Capture, Control, and Share. Quality adds a slider that lets you vary the image quality (and hence speed of the shared screen); Capture takes a local screenshot of the remote Mac, Control toggles the mode from "you control everything" to "you observe everything," and Share lets you toggle whether the other machine's mouse and keyboard are active while you're in sharing mode. These are all features of the full Apple Remote Desktop program, I believe.

In my testing, they worked reasonably well, but not perfectly. For instance, the first time I used Curtain mode, the remote Mac locked with a solid blue screen. After I restarted it, though, Curtain mode worked, but the text display exhibited a bug -- I entered "Controlled by robg..." and the onscreen display read "Controlled by robg....lockedByString." But in general, all these features work well, and they add welcomed functionality to screen sharing.

Finally, you can still use the Customize Toolbar option within Screen Sharing and you won't lose these new buttons -- as long as you don't drag them off, obviously, or drag in the default toolbar choice.]

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing \ 'NSToolbar Configuration ControlToolbar' -dict-add 'TB Item Identifiers' \ '(Scale,Control,Share,Curtain,Capture,FullScreen,GetClipboard,SendClipboard,Quality)'

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10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing | 33 comments | Create New Account

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10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: msilverman on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 8:33AM PST

Wow, that is really interesting...those are indeed all features of the full Remote Desktop...I wonder if Apple removed them to make things easier for novice users or to force people to pony up $$ for full ARD if they wanted them. But, obviously they are still "baked in" to screen sharing. I wonder if there is any other hidden "free" ARD functionality waiting to be found?

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: wallybear on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 8:52AM PST

You can use the "defaults" command to set those properties, with no need to install Developer Tools.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: daniel_steffen on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 9:40AM PST

indeed, the following command adds all the available toolbar buttons (in the order they appear in the fullscreen floating tool window):

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: xcgr on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 12:43PM PST

The command posted by daniel_steffen worked perfectly for me. Much, much better than the unnecessarily convoluted instructions in the original hint.

I hope Rob updates the hint to mention this method, or a lot of people are likely to miss it.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: robg on Thu, Dec 13 2007 at 9:01AM PST

As it's noted in the comments, and some people dislike using Terminal commands, I'm going to leave the hint as is. I trust readers to read both hints and comments, for there's no way I can ever capture the entire knowledge base of the comments in every single hint -- the re-editing would take forever! :)

-rob.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: adrianm on Sat, Dec 15 2007 at 8:44PM PST

Yes, but you could add to the "robg adds" bit saying "See comments below for a one-liner that won't require you to clutter your HD with 2GB of dev tools you don't need."

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~/.sig: not found

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: helloallan on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 3:34PM PST

Indeed this method works for me too.

It's so simple!

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: alternapop on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 9:06AM PST

http://www.alternapop.com/2007/12/01/leopard-screen-sharing-image-quality/

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: forman on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 10:11AM PST

Concisely, this is what one needs to do to enable the six new useful buttons.

With the developer tools installed, type the following in a terminal:
- open -a "Property List Editor.app" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist
Under "Root > NSToolbar Configuration ControlToolbar > TB Item Identifiers" select a sibling.
Click the "New Sibling" button and add the following all of type "String":
- Control
- Share
- FullScreen
- Curtain
- Capture
- Quality
Share screens with a computer via finder or by directly running "Screen Sharing.app".
Select "View > Show Toolbar" from the menu.
Right click on the tool bar and select "Customize Toolbar...", if you'd like to rearrange the new buttons.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: V.K. on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 10:12AM PST

Thanks for the tip! I've been looking for a full-screen option ever since installing leopard. Chicken of VNC has it but leopard screen sharing didn't seem to.
They should really make it available by default without using dev tools or tricky terminal commands.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: Papillon on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 11:01AM PST

Thanks! Great hint.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: cooter on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 2:20PM PST

Great, now I can use screen sharing full screen in its own space. How cool...

Oh, crap. There seems to be no way to switch spaces back to my other apps without exiting full screen mode. Bummer. Anyone have any ideas?

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: expanderz on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 6:35PM PST

Anyway to enable drag-n-drop between macs like in Remote Desktop?

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: dethbunny on Mon, Dec 10 2007 at 10:48PM PST

Everybody's missing my favorite undocumented setting in the same plist: the Bonjour browser! Change the "ShowBonjourBrowser_Debug" boolean from "No" to "Yes." (Or the following if you're Terminal-happy.)

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing ShowBonjourBrowser_Debug -bool true

You now have a Bonjour-based browser that opens whenever you run Screen Sharing. It's now a useful, dock-worthy app. Click it, then control the target machine. You don't have to dink around with the Finder to remotely control the machine. Yay! It'll even remember passwords.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: expanderz on Tue, Dec 11 2007 at 2:59AM PST

Excellent, works great!

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: bdog on Tue, Dec 11 2007 at 4:47AM PST

That's because there was a hint on just that pref already.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: robg on Thu, Dec 13 2007 at 9:07AM PST

Indeed, there was.

-rob.

Wrestling With the Leopard
Authored by: BodhiCat on Tue, Dec 11 2007 at 8:30AM PST

All I can say at this point is that I am very disappointed in Leopard (OS 10.5). After several tries at getting MySQL and SQLite to work with Perl CGI, I have given up and am just going to have to use tab separated data files to store on-line data.

I have been the ‘computer guy' in an state office for almost 10 years and we have used Macs exclusively. I haven't seen an OS so buggy since 10.0. 10.5 won't even untar a compressed file. Hopefully, they will come out with a free fix to Leopard, like they did when they offered 10.1.

For now I will just have to limp along with 10.5 as it is. Well rant over for the morning. Good luck to anyone else wrestling with the Leopard.
—BC

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: Sven G on Tue, Dec 11 2007 at 10:47AM PST

BTW, is it possibile to add these buttons/icons also to the Customise Toolbar options? And how, then?

That would be a more complete solution, indeed!

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: forman on Wed, Dec 19 2007 at 6:11PM PST

Concisely, this is what needs to be run from the command line in order to enable all nine buttons:

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing 
'NSToolbar Configuration ControlToolbar' -dict-add 'TB Item Identifiers' 
'(Scale,Control,Share,Curtain,Capture,FullScreen,GetClipboard,SendClipboard,Quality)'

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: forman on Wed, Dec 19 2007 at 6:40PM PST

Here's a link that provides more details to the hint above, including how to enable the bonjour browser for "Screen Sharing.app":

http://www.macdeveloperjournal.com/article/131094/2007/12/screensharepower.html

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: rmanke on Tue, Mar 4 2008 at 4:33PM PST

Sorry to bring this up yet again... but has anyone been successful in figuring out how to get the app to default to "Observe" mode when connecting to a computer?

This would be very useful, and I would think should be the default setting anyways...

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: monoclast on Fri, Apr 25 2008 at 8:16PM PDT

The 'defaults' method, as described by MacWorld, is a one-shot solution that I find the easiest:

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing \
'NSToolbar Configuration ControlToolbar' -dict-add 'TB Item Identifiers' \
'(Scale,Control,Share,Curtain,Capture,FullScreen,GetClipboard,SendClipboard,Quality)'

MacWorld Article:
http://www.macworld.com/article/131094/2007/12/screensharepower.html

---
-monoclast

[ Reply to This | # ]

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: infinitysupport on Tue, Jun 3 2008 at 10:56AM PDT

This is an awesome hint and I've been using it for a while now. Bonjour browsing is a great feature.

However, has anyone figured out how to remove systems from the "My Computers" list after you've connected to them?

My list has gotten cluttered with systems I've connected to once or twice as well as some whose names have since changed.

Thanks.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: elliotbay on Thu, Jun 5 2008 at 8:37PM PDT

The aforementioned plist file stores all the saved computers. Simply remove the relevant ones from the list. You can also reorder them this way.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: damiansipko on Wed, Jun 18 2008 at 9:38PM PDT

To completely reset the Bonjour browser in Screen Sharing you must drag the file: com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist to the trash and restart Screen Sharing. Of course you'll have to re-enable the Bonjour browser with the hint above. You can locate the file here: Macintosh HD/Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences/

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: darrenleeweber on Mon, Sep 8 2008 at 2:49PM PDT


open /Developer/Applications/Utilities/Property\ List\ Editor.app ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist

Then remove entries from the dictionary called SavedComputers

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: lcms on Tue, Sep 16 2008 at 2:54AM PDT

Seems that this one is no longer working in 10.5.5 :-(
Had id working in 10.5.4, but 10.5.5 has overwritten the preferences and when you re-add the siblings, nothing changes.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: Bottacco on Wed, Sep 17 2008 at 7:47AM PDT

I recovered the pref file from another computer with 10.5.4 but it won't work either. I think Apple wants us to buy Remote Desktop. I will poke around with that file a little bit more just in case... I suppose that there has to be some way to "activate" those buttons again.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: jhaffner on Wed, Sep 17 2008 at 2:56PM PDT

I can confirm that the added toolbar buttons have gone away in 10.5.5.

I trashed my previous preference file, and started all over again. Now the additional buttons do not appear. (sigh)

---
Don't worry, it's out of control.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: jrobert on Tue, Sep 30 2008 at 6:57PM PDT

This article:
[link:]http://www.macworld.com/article/135649/2008/09/screen_sharing_buttons.html
shows several ways to restore the capability.

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: mr_zorg on Wed, Jan 21 2009 at 8:58PM PST

While looking for a way to get this functionality back on 10.5.5+ (I wound up going back to the old Screen Sharing v1.0 app, btw), I stumbled across this other hint:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050418141459704

I went looking for the file it describes only to find that it doesn't exist in Screen Sharing.app at all. If you create the file and populate it with the defaults listed in that hint, 'lo and behold the "lockedByString bug" goes away and functions as it should. Enjoy!

10.5: Add useful toolbar buttons to Screen Sharing
Authored by: jakob.joergensen on Fri, Apr 3 2009 at 1:14AM PDT

Solution found! Works for 10.5.4 and up... With SIMBL and megazoomer correctly installed, one can with all programs (except Screen Share) press ⌘+⏎ for full screen for all Cocoa programs. Screen Share is a bit difficult, though, I think cause the remote computer eats all your input! What you need to do here is go to the menu item Window and simply select mega zoom. To exit full screen move the mouse to the top of your screen and the menu bar will show so you can repeat the procedure. Voila!

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