Mac OS X

Speed Up ScreenSharing

Screen Sharing over a WAN can be a bit slow. But you can send less data and receive a less latent connection. To do so, you are going to augment the controlObserveQuality key of the com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist property list. If you set the key to a 1, which I see commonly suggested then it will be black and white, which in todays world is another way of saying practically illegible. Instead try the number 2, which sets it to grey scale, which is pretty good (that’s what I use). To do so run:

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing controlObserveQuality 2

You can also set the controlObserveQuality key to 3, 4 or 5 which is 8-bit color, 16-bit color and full color respectively. Since the default connection is full color, resetting the controlObserveQuality to default would mean running:

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing controlObserveQuality 5