Computer Help and Support

Last edited Sat Sep 10, 2022, 03:47 PM - Edit history (2)

This might work for you .. the Screen Sharing thing works pretty well, but yeah, it's a little confusing.

Just fyi, NAT is short for Network Address Translation. It's a way of sharing network addresses (IP addresses) so you can have lots of computers (devices) all using the same address.

It works great, but it makes it hard for outside computers to reach the individual machines that are sharing the NAT address ... more details if you want them

And easier way ... but somewhat less reliable:

1) On your mothers computer, go to system preferences, Sharing, and enable "Screen Sharing". You don't need to enable "Remote Management" (though that should work too I think).

2) On *both* of your computers, fire up the Messages application. Use it to send some text messages back and forth and confirm that it's working. You might need to add/update your contacts with the icloud address of the other on both machines.

3) Once that works, on *either* computer, look closely at the Messages window for your chat. The top line should say "To: " and then on the right side should be a little "i" in a circle button. Click it.

4) You should see a popup dialog now with their full name and a row of buttons (and then some other stuff). That row of buttons should be:

5) call, video, share, mail, info

6) if you're lucky, the share button will be clickable (and not grayed out / disabled).

If you can click the share button, you'll get another prompt "Invite to share screen" or "Ask to share screen"

Your mother would pick invite, you would be request

And then you should see her screen in a window. One of the buttons will switch from observe only to observe and control.

And then it should be pretty easy

Biggest problem though is (for me) sometimes that share button isn't enabled. It's not clear to me exactly when it fails. Hopefully you'll have better luck.

Btw - try and be sure that your Contacts info has your mother's cell number and iCloud address in them. And your mother's Contacts info for you should have your iCloud name too. That way messages will be using the iCloud to text back and forth and not just use SMS messages. The iCloud connection is what allows the screen sharing to work. And of course when you request (or offer) to share your screen, the other person should get a popup alert asking if it's ok.