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I have an iMac mid 2011 at home. When I was not home, I may need to access my mac with Screen Sharing. However the iMac display will turn itself on when I connect via Screen Sharing. The problem is I don't want to scare my family at home (with the elders and kids) as the iMac "turn itself on suddenly".

This is a problem specific for iMac. On MacBooks (Pro, Air, whatever) I can set the brightness to the lowest setting so the screen is black (i.e. the LED light is off). However on an iMac you cannot turn off the LED backlit by setting brightness. The display is still bright and everything is clearly visible even on lowest brightness setting.

Therefore these solution are not working as the display will turn on as soon as you move your mouse or hit any key on the keyboard via Screen Sharing.

Question: Is the a way to keep the iMac display off while you accessing it with Screen Sharing?

UPDATE
I have a workaround, but that's not perfect. With Brightness Control (freeware), I can make my screen black while everything is still visible via Screen Sharing. However it didn't turn off the LED light. A black screen with the LED backlit on is still drawing enough attention in the evening.

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You could try just telling them that you have this magical power... Everyone in my house assumes that if a computer starts talking, or songs stop or start playing, or the volume gets higher or lower, or the mouse starts moving randomly that it's me doing something... – daviewales Feb 21 at 13:01

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

OS X Lion added per-user screen sharing: the ability to have multiple remote desktop sessions active on a single Mac at the same time. It's not a perfect solution, but you may find it good enough for your case.

When you connect to your Mac via Screen Sharing make sure the session is in Control Mode, not View Mode. You can switch modes by pressing Cmd+Option+X in the Screen Sharing app.

Once in Control Mode, look under the View menu and you should see an entry that says "Switch to Virtual Display". Select that to change the session to a virtual display, not the current desktop display, and log in as yourself.

The main display on your iMac should go to sleep according to your screen saver and energy settings once you've disconnected your remote session from the physical display and moved it to a virtual display.

The only flaw in this approach is I know of no way to start Screen Sharing on a virtual display from the get go. So the initial connect always wakes up the physical display.

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Instead of turning the computer off, or putting it in sleep mode, you could consider just turning the display off.

There is a key combination that you can use to turn the screen off which is: ctrl + shift + eject.

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The display will "wake up" as soon as you move your mouse or type on the keyboard via Screen Sharing, so this didn't work :( – howanghk Feb 21 at 18:10
oops it is weekend and I am out of town atm, will try it after I get home on Sunday night, thanks in advance. – howanghk Mar 1 at 20:15
sure, however im 99% it will work! what it does, is that it actually dont put your display to sleep,and therfore you wont "wake it" it will just lower it to ridiculously low amounts, and the display is practically off! – Macmaniman Mar 3 at 12:37
I am sorry to tell you that the "Brightness Slider" didn't work. On my iMac with the lowest brightness with this app does not dim the mouse cursor, and I have taken a photo for that funny effect: cl.ly/NJGl – howanghk Mar 3 at 19:00
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