06.05.2020

Fastest Vnc Client For Mac

69
Fastest Vnc Client For Mac Average ratng: 6,1/10 3993 votes
Active3 years, 4 months ago
  1. Based on an older software package called Chicken of the VNC, Chicken is an open source VNC client for Mac OS X. The Chicken package does not include any VNC server functionality, nor does the client run on any other operating system than Mac OS X. Chicken can be paired with various VNC servers including UltraVNC.
  2. Aside from the awesome name, JollyFastVNC Pro promises to be the fastest and most secure VNC viewer for the Mac. They’re not lying either as JollyFastVNC Pro supports SSH Tunneling, SOCKS and SSL right out of the box.

Connecting to a Mac from a Windows PC. Connecting to a Mac from a Windows PC is a little different. You’re not going to be able to use Remote Desktop, but that’s okay because there’s a free client called RealVNC viewer that does the trick nicely. Just like with Windows, you first have to set up your Mac for screen sharing.

In a test, I could stream a full HD movie across our network from my friend's computer, no problem.It's as fast as I could want.

But VNC is painfully slow. We've tried Real VNC and Tight VNC, I've played around with the Capture Method settings, but nothing seems to make a difference; it's just so slow.

Does anyone have any tips on using VNC, on how to improve the speed, or perhaps any alternatives?

Download BetOnline Poker Mac BetOnline Poker Mac Software The trials and tribulations that many Mac users have had to go through in order to find a suitable online poker experience has been hard but these days are at an end. The BetOnline Poker Odds Calculator is available for FREE to use exclusively in the BetOnline Poker Room. You will be able to see instant poker odds and outs on the fly in an easy and simple interface to enhance your poker experience. We have created a few step by step guides making it easy for you to download BetOnline Poker depending on which BetOnline Poker download suits you the best. As it will depend if you are looking for a Mac BetOnline Poker download link for your MacBook or just a standard PC download link. BetOnline Poker Download for Mac While a majority of poker rooms choose to skimp on Mac development, BetOnline has not minced on the cross-platform features it offers. The poker site's software is fully functional on Mac platforms. Betonline poker client download for mac.

Is it the nature of not being able to notice invalidated portions of the screen quickly enough, or is there a network thing slowing it down perhaps?

We are both using Windows 7.

We need to be able to view and control each other's PCs without locking out the host, so RDP will not work (unless someone knows otherwise).

Scott
17.2k11 gold badges46 silver badges92 bronze badges
Josh ComleyJosh Comley
1,89213 gold badges41 silver badges50 bronze badges

8 Answers

VNC is just plain inefficient. VNC works pretty much by taking a series of screenshots, compressing them, and slinging them across the network

On Windows, RDP will give you better performance, but you need professional or better on the server/source end for proper RDP I believe.

wierdly remote assistance may work better for your needs -its RDP with both the user at the terminal, and the user at the remote system seeing the same screen

EDIT: 4 years on, I'm using nomachine for similar tasks - would work across OSes, and does a few other useful things.

Journeyman GeekJourneyman Geek
115k44 gold badges224 silver badges382 bronze badges

VNC is not comparable to video streaming. In video streaming you typically transfer a pre-compressed video stream via the network. For HD streams it's often H.264 encoded.If you use VNC then your host computer has to take screen snapshots and compress them before sending them on to the network. There are several constraints here:

  • Strong compression needs a lot of CPU power. For example encoding a 90 minutes movie in H.264 in high quality often takes more than 4 hours compression time on my Athlon X2 4450e server. Usually such strong compression is unsuitable for real-time applications like remote control.
  • Less strong compression in turn will require more network bandwidth which might become an issue on low-bandwidth connections like the internet.

Well, there are a couple of 'tricks' which are applied by video codecs and remote control and screen-sharing utilities. First of all they try to detect the screen changes and transfer the (compressed) image of the changes only. This usually saves A LOT of bandwith and processing power. However for full-screen video transfer it does not help a lot since the whole screen has to be re-transferred too often.As written above current machines will probably be unable to rel-time encode your screen content in Full-HD and stream it to a remote-control application since your host will have to decode the video content and then re-encode the raw images before sending them to the network. Some older Dual-Core machines are even at the limit when decoding Full-HD video content. Not even speaking about having to re-encode the Full-HD images on screen again before sending them to the VNC client.

To improve your VNC remote-control speed you can do the following:

  • Most VNC servers/clients support multiple compression algorithms. Some of them are optimized for small bandwidth, some for good image quality and some for low latency. This touches another aspect of remote control. Since the service is interactive latency matters (you don't want to see the reaction to a mouse click just after 5 minutes of encoding).
  • Try to reduce the amount of screen changes on your host machine. For example try disabling Windows desktop effects, animations etc. This saves bandwitdth as only changed parts of the screen are transferred over network.
  • Try disabling further visual effects on the host like transparency. Transparent Windows as used by Vista/Win7 reduce the 'compressability' of images. Uni-colored/'flat' areas are much more efficient to compress than vibrant colors and fancy details. So disabling Aero transparency and desktop effects really speed up remote control experience. Most remote control tools even allow to disable such effects automatically on connect (e.g. Microsoft RDP and some VNC implementations).
  • Same applies to background pictures. Try using uni-colored background setting instead of HD pictures.

Another issue for VNC is that it has to detect the changes on your screen. Some VNC implementations do 'dumb' screenshots and compare them to the previous screenshot to detect changes. This is taking a lot of power already.Some more advanced implementations work with special display drivers (check UltraVNC) which are more efficient here but require special drivers to be installed.

Of course all this does not help if you're playing a video on your host machine. In this case VNC will have to re-encode ~30 full-screen images per second and send it via network. On most compressions which can be performed in real-time by todays CPUs such a stream would take > 8Mbps of bandwidth. So it's unsuitable for most internet connections (especially think about asymmetric DSL connections with typically less than 1Mbps upload speed, and yes, it's upload speed which matters on host side).

It might be suitable for LAN use, but here you should probably more think about setting up a media server or share your media using DLNA/UPnP media server (even Win7 media player can do this). Then use a DLNA client to play the shared media.

SkyBeamSkyBeam

The absolute fastest VNC variant I've ever used is UltraVNC with the Video Mirror Driver installed. RDP is still noticeably faster, but it's not nearly as bad.

I've also heard really good things about ZeroRemote, but never tested it. It appears that TrueRemote is its successor.

afrazierafrazier
21k2 gold badges49 silver badges82 bronze badges

If you're trying to watch video across a LAN, the fastest solution in terms of sheer screen-drawing speed is probably Radmin.

ShinraiShinrai
17.8k3 gold badges45 silver badges73 bronze badges

As @Journeyman Geek says, VNC is inefficient. This is by design so that VNC doesn't have to 'understand' what the remote client is trying to display.

RDP actually does, so it can take shortcuts and render images faster. RDP tells the other end, for example, 'client opened a window at this location' instead of sending the bitmap data representing the screen change. Vmware horizon client for mac.

There are 'terminal server' hacks out there that will add RDP capability to the versions of Windows that don't feature them, but I don't officially recommend them and you use these at your own risk. However, I think even the 'Starter' versions of Windows 7 come with 'Remote Assistance' (msra.exe) which you might try using.

Things you can do to improve VNC performance, however, include lowering the display depth to 8 bits, lowering the resolution of the client screen, and using client-side bitmap caching. That means VNC has to ship less data on the wire and you'll experience better performance (but it won't look pretty).

LawrenceCLawrenceC
61.5k12 gold badges109 silver badges186 bronze badges

You may also try TeamViewer, it's free for non-commercial use and was fairly fast for me. I've not tested it on HD video though.

wizzard0wizzard0

If you are looking for performance you need to not use VNC, Try something like LogMeIn. It's free and works well.

Jeff F.Jeff F.
4,1481 gold badge15 silver badges41 bronze badges

For me, even over internet (with ping rates > 50ms and decent bandwithd > 1mbit/s) I get very good behavior on UltraVNC. The magic comes with changing the connection settings.

After starting the viewer, go to 'Connection Options', disable 'Auto select best settings', enable 'Tight' and lower the 'Jpeg' to lower quality, if needed (2-4 works well).

That is the only way I know of of gting Full Colors with decent performance.You will get several fps afterwards, enough to get a fast slideshow on a full screen movie (enough for everything I am doing, including remote development, for real movie watching too slow and also there is no audio).

Also, in server 'Properties', it helps to have (if not using mirror driver which greatly helps performance) to have 'Poll Full Screen', 'Poll Foreground Window', 'Poll Window Under Cursor', 'System HookDll', 'Low Accuracy' turned on. Basically, just about everything on the left.

Andreas ReiffAndreas Reiff
5305 gold badges9 silver badges26 bronze badges

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged windows-7performancevncvideo-streaming or ask your own question.

It cannot be denied that no matter how advanced technologies have become these days, there are still some instances wherein they cause a little trouble. Imagine having to bring your MAC computer to work simply because your workplace does not support the same operating system? Of course, this is something that everyone wants to avoid but what if you need some files that can only be accessed through some applications exclusive to MAC? How do you think will you be able to go about it? Forget experiencing this kind of trouble and take a look at some of the best VNC client for MAC that you can use right now.

10. Splashtop

The Splashtop app is great because it supports both PC and MAC. However, before you can use it, you first need to install a Splashtop streamer application that is free anyway. Otherwise, this one wouldn’t necessarily work. With this kind of application, you can easily stream videos, enjoy a range of 3D games that you’ve previously saved in your MAC computer even when you’re away from it and more. Note though that this client is basically designed for more personal use as opposed to work-related ones.

9. Apple Remote Desktop

Free Vnc Client For Mac

What’s great about the Apple Remote Desktop is the fact that it works wonders for deploying not only documents but also hardware and software reports. This is why if you are sent elsewhere and you need to access your stuff, you can easily get remote assistance and easily transfer and copy the files you need within minutes. It is important to note though that using the said application is quite pricey at $79.99 but it should definitely be worth it.

8. iTeleport

If you are looking for a reliable, clean and up-to-date VNC client for MAC then you’ve landed the best option you have with iTeleport. This application is user friendly and gives you everything you need with just a few browses and clicks. The minute you click on whatever computer you would like to control, you will immediately be “teleported” to it. What’s more, you can access the options that will make it possible for you to access your documents from a remote computer anywhere in the world too.

7. Remotix

If you happen to be a huge Apple and MAC fan and you have different types of gadgets under the said brand, then the Remotix application is the best option you have. This is because this app features an iCloud integration that can sync all the information you need from a VNC client to all of your Apple gadgets. This way, you will be able to access everything no matter what you are using at the moment.

6. Jump Desktop

If you have plans of controlling different types of machines through the use of a VNC, then the Jump Desktop application is the best option that you have. This is because you will easily be taken to a screen where you can view live previews of other machines you have set up earlier through the use of a VNC. What’s more, this application is made to not be overwhelming so you wouldn’t have problems using it even if it’s just your first time.

5. Desktop Connect

Best Vnc Client For Mac

Compared to most of the VNC clients you can find, the Desktop Connect may be regarded as the simplest and most ordinary option you have. But there’s really no need to worry about it especially if you consider the fact that it comes with most competitive price. At only $14.99, you will be able to not only access documents and files from other computers remotely but you will also be able to experience a relatively simple and direct to the point type of interface.

4. Easy Remote Desktop

A lot of people have opted to purchasing the Easy Remote Desktop application for two main reasons: it’s relatively cheap at only $0.99 and it also comes with simple yet effective features that make it possible for you to connect to your MAC gadgets within minutes. However, with this kind of price, do not expect the application to last very long because after it was created, there have been no updates whether or not the application will still be developed and supported by its creators. So there’s a pretty big chance that this application will become obsolete.

3. Jolly Fast VNC Pro

If you are looking for a speedy and safe VNC viewer for MAC then your best option is indeed the Jolly Fast VNC Pro. This one guarantees that all your viewing activities be safe, protected and absolutely quick. This VNC viewer is also the one that’s most compatible to almost all types of connections like LAN and so much more.

2. Remote Desktop VNC

Tightvnc

Remote Desktop is your one stop shop kind of option when it comes to VNC viewing. This application in particular is perfect for use if you want to access just a single computer. Other than this, this VNC client also makes it possible for you to connect to remote machines while using your home network or over a VPN connection, thus giving you more options for viewing content. Since this application is also free of charge, it is considered to be one of the best options you have to date.

1. Light Screen Sharing

Is Vnc Free

Your $1.99 will never go to waste especially if you download the Light Screen Sharing VNC client. This is because this one is not only cheap, it also makes it possible for users to connect to a remote MAC via a Back to My Mac tool or through the use of a VNC. You can also update a live status bar, copy and paste files and contents between machines, drag and drop files between computers and so much more. Considering the fact that it’s only $1.99, this application is considered to truly be one of the greatest VNC client options you have.