Best VNC viewer for Mac OS X

I find chicken of the vnc to be the best.

The best one I've found to date and has worked great for me is Chicken of the VNC. Plus its free so can't beat that.

Edit: just beaten to the punch

restone's vnc* is not too shabby, some of the features I like are that:

-you can config a startup server
-you can make it so you have to tunnel through with ssh to get access
-if it crashes it will restart itself

also best of all, it comes as a universal binary!

I haven't used chicken of the vnc, I'll check it

*http://www.redstonesoftware.com/vnc.html

adese said:

restone's vnc* is not too shabby, some of the features I like are that:

-you can config a startup server
-you can make it so you have to tunnel through with ssh to get access
-if it crashes it will restart itself

also best of all, it comes as a universal binary!

I haven't used chicken of the vnc, I'll check it

*http://www.redstonesoftware.com/vnc.html

Click to expand...

Thats not a viewer thats just a server right? Oh and Chicken of the VNC is UB as well as of the newest update.

adese said:

restone's vnc* is not too shabby, some of the features I like are that:

-you can config a startup server
-you can make it so you have to tunnel through with ssh to get access
-if it crashes it will restart itself

also best of all, it comes as a universal binary!

I haven't used chicken of the vnc, I'll check it

*http://www.redstonesoftware.com/vnc.html

Click to expand...

The thread starter wanted a VNC viewer, not a server, although OSXvnc is a great server.

I'd go for Chicken of the VNC as well, but it's not that great as it lacks some of the more advanced features of VNC clients on other OSs, i.e. TightVNC support, JPEG compression (great for low bandwidth connections) and the ability to scale the image down (great for viewing large screens on a laptop).

Still, its the best available on OSX AFAIK, unless you want to run the VNC viewer under X11.

adese said:

restone's vnc* is not too shabby, some of the features I like are that:

-you can config a startup server
-you can make it so you have to tunnel through with ssh to get access
-if it crashes it will restart itself

also best of all, it comes as a universal binary!

I haven't used chicken of the vnc, I'll check it

*http://www.redstonesoftware.com/vnc.html

Click to expand...

That's 'just" the open source OSXVnc server from sourceforge. I'm not arguing that it's a bad product but it's a VNC server and the OP wanted a viewer. I concur with Chicken of the VNC for a viewer.

yeah sorry I guess I didn't pay attention or something

.

Sorry for the massive bump but I'm looking for a VNC viewer as well. I like Chicken of the VNC, but my only problem with it is it won't auto-fit the display into my screen... So when I'm viewing a remote screen larger than my 13" Macbook, it becomes kind of a pain. Is there a VNC viewer that can do this on OS X?

I use JollyFastVNC. works well for me

http://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html


not sure what you mean fit to screen. But I don't have much of a problem with it on my 13" macbook with the "zoom"

logmein.com

This is awesome. I've used Chicken of the VNC and JollysfastVNC but have two main issues with them both - the hassle of having to forward ports and the speed - on a fast connection, directly working on a remote machine is painful - far too much lag. So I used Cyberduck to send files to myself before working locally and re-sending back to the remote machine.

Then per chance, I stumbled upon http://www.logmein.com. Compared to the other two, it screams! I can work full screen, directly on my work iMac from my home iMac and, apart from *slight* lag and the fact that I'm working in 8-bit colour, it's brilliant. It even recognises 2-screen systems.

I use the free version which just enables direct contact, but there are paid for versions which add direct clipboard access and other premium items I don't really need.

Jolly Fast VNC

Its fast easy to use and free!!! http://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html

Apple oder Teamviewer

Apple has a very good VNC Client and Server directly integrated into OS X. The Viewer can be found on this path: /System/Library/CoreServices/Screen\ Sharing.app. You can enable the server in Sharing Preferences Pane, either on Screen Sharing or Remote Management.

But if you want an easy way to access your buddys desktop, then I would suggest http://www.teamviewer.com/.

Greetz Kw4nta

kwanta said:

Apple has a very good VNC Client and Server directly integrated into OS X. The Viewer can be found on this path: /System/Library/CoreServices/Screen\ Sharing.app. You can enable the server in Sharing Preferences Pane, either on Screen Sharing or Remote Management.

But if you want an easy way to access your buddys desktop, then I would suggest http://www.teamviewer.com/.

Greetz Kw4nta

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info on Screen Sharing.app. Is there a way to send special characters (e.g. alt-ctl-del)?

Any updated versions? 10.6 built in viewer is nice but its slow and missing a lot if you work with windows computers. All my windows comps are 1920x1080 and my laptop is only 1440x900 so i need the scaling the built in viewer offers.

I wish UltraVNC would make a mac port of at lest the viewer..

Does anyone know of any alternatives that have been updated in the last decade?

Edit: Found that RealVNC has a mac version and the viewer appears to be free http://www.realvnc.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi?product=enterprise4/macvnc

RealVNC Viewer

RealVNC Viewer is free and it works like a charm for me and my Windows Server 2008 server:

http://www.realvnc.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi

Woops, just saw your edit.

for MacOSX?

JollysFastVNC, without question.

http://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html

(Windows? TightVNC)

n8dogg said:

RealVNC Viewer is free and it works like a charm for me and my Windows Server 2008 server:

http://www.realvnc.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi

Woops, just saw your edit.

Click to expand...

My complaint with RealVNC is that it doesn't (as of Dec 2010) automagically find bonjour clients on the network, so I have to know the IP address, which is the pain that I gave up by using DHCP + Bonjour.

Also, RealVNC is not technically free. Neither is Jolly's, actually - both companies want you to license it.

Chicken has issues under SL and crashes randomly, so I cannot recommend it.

Does anyone use a VNC viewer from outside the local network? I want to be able to access my home computer using my iPad and 3G.

It looks like I can use Real VNC Enterprise edition, but thats $50 odd to buy.

Anyone know of other options?

Cheers

MongoNZ said:

Does anyone use a VNC viewer from outside the local network? I want to be able to access my home computer using my iPad and 3G.

It looks like I can use Real VNC Enterprise edition, but thats $50 odd to buy.

Anyone know of other options?

Cheers

Click to expand...

I do. I use Mocha VNC Lite on my iPad and iPhone. Simple, free, but gets the job done. Make sure you have port 5900 mapped if you use a router.

JollysFastVNC is rather good

I'm glad I came across this discussion. Chicken of the VNC is good, but a bit long in the tooth, so I tried out JollysFastVNC. While I don't get the performance shown in the video on the site (I guess that's a pretty optimal situation) it's still a huge improvement over CotVNC.

CotVNC is free, which makes it a pretty unbeatable priceerformance ratio, but €7.99 is worth it for the speed I get from JollysFastVNC.

Thanks for suggesting it!

VNCViewer is the only program that works with the server I am trying to connect to. Neither Chicken of the VNC, nor JollysFast, nor the Mac OS VNC connection worked for me. These give a message - Cannot Connect - but VNCViewer works perfectly. I downloaded the Enterprise Version for which you need a trial license key - but as it is the only thing that works for me, the money to buy it is a must!

There's also "Chicken", which is a current fork of "Chicken of the VNC". I jump between it and JollysFastVNC