Connecting to a Lion Mac via Screen Sharing from Snow Leopard

After upgrading my Snow Leopard (10.6) Mac server to Lion (10.7), I was no longer able to connect to it after rebooting via the handy “Share Screen…” button in Finder. It just behaved like I had the wrong password. This probably has something to do with Lion’s snazzy new Screen Sharing enhancements.

I found I was still able to connect by doing the following:

  1. In Finder, go to the “Go” menu and then to “Connect to Server…”
  2. Enter the following in the Server Address field:
    vnc://macname.local:5900/
    or with IP address:
    vnc://192.168.0.1:5900/
This entry was posted in Fixes, Lion, Mac OS X. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Connecting to a Lion Mac via Screen Sharing from Snow Leopard

  1. Tal says:

    Thanks.

    This is exactly what I needed to know to get my 10.6 to screen share my 10.7 machines. At first I didn’t think this did anything, but I had left out the 5700 port the first time. Everything was fine once I included the port to the vnc address.

  2. Glenn Koenig says:

    This worked great! I don’t need Chicken of the VNC, etc. When I called AppleCare, they didn’t tell me about this. So spread the word.
    Once you issue the above command, you’ll be asked for an account and password. These must match an actual account on the target machine. The password you may have used for Chicken of the VNC or other shareware in the past is irrelevant. If screen sharing on the target machine isn’t turned on and the user account you want isn’t listed, this won’t work. That must be set up ahead of time.

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