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During my work-from-home days, I use a Mac Mini at home to access my Mac workstation in my office through a VPN set up by my IT department at work. When I use OSX's Screen Sharing at home to control my workstation, does my workstation in my office display what I'm seeing & doing on the screen share at home, or is the screen still blank? If someone is in my office, can they see what I'm doing?

JohnG
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  • I would imagine so... but I'd also ask rather from the Apple guys in [Ask Different](https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/340994/) as they're sort of experts in this field. If you do, please delete this question - cross-posting is frowned upon. – Peregrino69 Sep 23 '21 at 18:27
  • This was originally asked and answered on StackOverflow, for which I was suitably thrashed for posting a non-programming question. Unfortunately, before I could delete the question, someone answered it; you can't delete answered questions, unfortunately, nor can you move them (as far as I know). Lesson learned. – JohnG Sep 23 '21 at 18:27
  • Oh dang. The question in SE appears to be closed now. In any case I'm pretty sure that's how it works. That's how basically every similar application I've ever encountered works. – Peregrino69 Sep 23 '21 at 18:34
  • I posted an answer. If it satisfies, please accept it so this doesn't stay ghosting around in the Unanswered -queue. – Peregrino69 Sep 23 '21 at 19:30
  • Yes, your screen is mirroring everything you do. If you don’t want that to happen, the best solution is to run your work machine as a headless (aka: no display) server. There are dongles out there [like this headless 4K display emulator](https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/ADP4KHEAD/). The benefit of a device like this is it tricks your PC into thinking a display is connected. But because no display is connected, nobody sees anything. And it can actually speed up the Screen Sharing connection because of a weird issue with the way Macs behave when no display is connected. – Giacomo1968 Sep 23 '21 at 19:44
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    Thanks, @Giacomo1968. I hadn't thought of the headless display option. Interesting solution! – JohnG Sep 24 '21 at 14:32
  • @JohnG No problem. I have setup many Mac mini’s as servers and the remote access is night and day better when a headless dongle is used versus no display connected alone. Worth the investment. – Giacomo1968 Sep 24 '21 at 14:53

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Yes, it does.

Apple Screen Sharing is just a VNC server, and you can connect to it with any VNC client. Anything you do in the VNC client window i.e. your work computer screen will be visible on the workplace monitor. Anything you do outside the VNC client window you're doing on your own system, and is not reflected in the remote end.

Just to be clear - I don't have 2 Macs to test with, but I connected to my MacBook from my Linux box using a standard VNC client. I don't know whether the client screen is reflected on the server side as well. I doubt it, but cannot confirm.

As advised by Tetsujin, the way to overcome this is Apple Remote Desktop. It contains a curtain mode, which blocks or conceals the display on the computer Screens is connected to, i.e. the remote screen won't show what the user's doing. Note that this is a paid product.

Peregrino69
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  • Because of this, I'd suggest investment in Apple Remote Desktop, which has a 'hide' option, 'Curtain Mode'. https://i.stack.imgur.com/oyxrs.png £70, idk the price in other currencies. – Tetsujin Sep 23 '21 at 20:19
  • Why am I not surprised @Tetsujin has the answer? :-D – Peregrino69 Sep 23 '21 at 20:21
  • TY :) Feel free to drop this in as part of your answer. It seemed pointless for me to basically write the same thing with one new paragraph at the end :) – Tetsujin Sep 23 '21 at 20:23
  • Heh - looks like the theme of the day is ["Let's promote the know-how other community members"](https://superuser.com/questions/1677680/is-there-an-equivalent-of-from-unix-systems-in-windows-cmd-exe/1677688#1677688) :-D – Peregrino69 Sep 23 '21 at 20:29
  • It's all invisible interweb points vs actually useful answers. i vote for useful answers every day, no matter who the points go to :)) – Tetsujin Sep 23 '21 at 20:30
  • Yea, couldn't care less abt points, just sharing the knowledge; and accumulating mine on the go :-) – Peregrino69 Sep 23 '21 at 20:31
  • Thanks to you both for your answers and insights. – JohnG Sep 24 '21 at 14:30