Access your Mac remotely

Back to My Mac lets you access one Mac from another from anywhere in

the world. All you need is an active internet connection, and a pair of Macs running OS X Lion or later and signed in to the same iCloud account.

In System Prefs > iCloud, tick the box beside Back to My Mac on the computers you either want to access or gain access from. As you can’t turn on the feature remotely, do it across all your Macs now in case you need it in the future.

Switch to Finder on the Mac from which you’ll access the other one, press ç+, to open its preferences, click the Sidebar tab, and ensure Back to My Mac is checked. If it is, your remote Mac should appear in the sidebar’s Shared section. Click it, then Connect As (near the top right of the window) to access the other Mac’s files. To gain full control of the other Mac’s desktop, click Share Screen instead.

There’s no built-in way to access a Back to My Macenabled computer from iOS, but you can do it with a third-party app, such as VNC Viewer (free, bit.ly/vncvwios).

If Finder’s Shared section is empty, make sure it’s not just collapsed by placing the pointer over its name. If Show appears to the right, click it.

If you still don’t see your remote Mac, the connection may be blocked by your router. Check that it supports UPnP or NAT-PMP. You’ll find troubleshooting tips for Back to My Mac at bit.ly/bckmc.