Apple ScreenSharing Tips

Ok, so you’re using your mac with all it’s apple goodness, and attempt to connect to another computer using the built in ScreenSharing capability. Your computer prompts you for a username and password to authenticate with the remote computer with a neet little login window. You put your login credentials in to the provided boxes and hit “connect”, immediately a little spinning wheel appears along with a “Connecting” message. You wait, and wait, and nothing seems to be happening. You attempt to connect again and you get right in to your screensharing session, but that “Connecting” window just keeps hanging around, and even when it’s not in focus it is still overlaying all other windows on your computer. It becomes rather annoying, and finally you shut off your computer out of desperation and restart. Whew the infamous box has been removed, but you also have to reopen all of your programs and documents to get back to a productive state.

the Mac Net Auth Agent Login Dialogue Window

I’ve been there myself many times, it is both annoying and frustrating. But there is a sure cure, besides restarting your computer. This little window is the “NetAuthAgent” and can easily be terminated from the Activity Monitor. Here’s how to do it.

From GUI:

1. Launch the Activity Monitor program (in Applications/Utilities).
2. In the Process Name list, look for “NetAuthAgent”. It may show as “Not Responding”.
3. Select NetAuthAgent, and then click Quit Process (the red stop sign button at the top of the Activity Monitor window). Then, click Force Quit.

From Terminial:

1. ps ax | grep NetAuthAgent
2. kill <pid-of-the-process-found-above>

or the Single Command From The Terminal:

$ killall NetAuthAgent

 

And there you have it, now you can get back to work and share screens all day long!

Visit the: Original forum post that gave me the lead I have just posted about