What's new

MacMini Headless Q

Arthur Ditner

Arthur Ditner

I want to add a M1 Mac to my home setup primarily for blogging and occasional Mac only tutorials (FCPX, GarageBand). The Mac Mini is coming in at a good price.

Only issue is that, I don't have a KVM setup in my office, and I do not have the space for a whole new desktop.

Is it possible (and easy) to use a Mac headless from a Windows desktop?

Thank you in advance
 
I use 'nomachine' a lot for this but on an older model mac trashcan. Have also have good results with parsec if it's not within LAN. You may want to look into a dummy hdmi plug to help it keep a resolution you are after. Another cheap option I have played with is pikvm, it's just a raspberry pi kvm which I like because it can serve other purposes and I just access in a web browser.
 
Both TeamViewer and Microsoft Remote Desktop can be used for this, as well as the aforementioned NoMachine. All work well and all have non-commercial free versions available. And as the previous poster already mentioned, you might need to use a monitor dongle on the Mac Mini to set screen resolution properly. And you might need to attach a keyboard on startup.
 
Microsoft Remote Desktop was probably the most reliable connection for me mostly because it's built into the sharing settings on the mac vs. relying on per app security settings but had some issues crashing the gpu(but admittedly I think that was more with windows to windows.) Teamviewer is awesome but they will bust you using the non-commercial for commercial purposes. Not that I tried that or anything... With the new security updates on macs I have not been able to use google remote desktop whatsoever with our macs which used to be my easy go to.
 
Jump Desktop has been good for me as well but I access via my MacBookPro not a Win PC. No monthly subscription fee either. I've also plugged in a dummy HDMI "dongle" so that the mini screen share doesn't go super low res.
 
I ended up purchasing a used 6-core 2018 MacMini. At the moment I’m using Synergy to use the same keyboard and mouse to control both my Windows PC and the Mini on macOS, and flipping the input on a second monitor. Synergy is working extremely well for this but will try Jump desktop next.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top