Networking two Macs together

[carbontune]

If I want to be able to 'see' one of my Macs from the other Mac - browse it's hard drives and copy files from them - then is it simply a matter of sharing the the drives of one of the Macs, and then I'll be able to see that Mac from the other Mac in Finder?

That's assuming that both Macs are on the same network.

 

[techwarrior]

Yes, System Preferences > Sharing > File Sharing. Choose Folder(s) you want to share and which users should have access to them. Good idea to remove Anyone from the User list if the computers will be used in places where others will be on the network.

As for users, if you use the same user account(s)\password(s) on both computers, just include that\those users. Else, choose a user from your contacts (preferably an iCloud user account) and the other person can login using that account.

 

[carbontune]

Many thanks!

 

[carbontune]

Just to update this thread, this ended up requiring zero additional effort. I created the same user account on my new Mac (same username and same password) and both Macs were on the same network (connected to my broadband router). The new Mac could see the old one on the network and I could browse both of its drives in Finder without entering any account credentials.

This made transferring data very easy indeed. My thinking is that my new Mac tried my logged on credentials against the old Mac and they were accepted so that I didn’t have to enter them manually.