How to connect mac to mac wifi

How to Share Your Mac’s Internet Connection

It seems that you need the Internet to do anything productive these days. Sadly, many modern desktop computers don’t come with WiFi. Manufacturers expect you to either buy a wireless card after you find this out or share your wireless connection from another computer.

The second method works well the other way, too: take a wired Internet connection and broadcast it with your integrated WiFi card. So how do you set up all these fancy features? In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to share an Internet connection from your Mac to any wired or wireless device, whether it be an Xbox or PC.

Internet Sharing Explained

Suppose that you have an old notebook PC sitting on your desk, unable to connect to WiFi due to its lack of modern hardware. It does, of course, have an ethernet port. Using that, you can connect your Mac to the wired notebook and connect it to the Internet quickly. This can also be handy if you need to get WiFi drivers for the USB adapter you just bought for it.

An Apple AirPort Extreme that’s full of ethernet devices.

Another way of using Internet sharing is as a replacement for a router. Usually, a router would broadcast a signal to computers in its radius and allow them to connect to the Internet.

Now, if you don’t want to spend money on a nice one, you can just use an old Mac mini (not that everyone has one of those lying around) or iMac to act as one. It simply receives the Internet connection from the modem through ethernet and distributes it properly using the built-in WiFi card. I used this at my parents’ house when they didn’t want to invest in a router.

Option 1. Turning Your Mac Into a Router

To broadcast your Internet connection wirelessly, you’ll need a WiFi card that’s either built in to your Mac or connected via USB. I do not recommend leaving the computer on constantly because it will drain the life of the components.

Step 1. Open the Sharing Pane in System Preferences

First, launch the System Preferences app and open the Sharing pane. In the left pane, you’ll find options to share anything from your screen to your printer. Select Internet Sharing to begin configuring the connection.

Step 2. Adjust Sharing Options

To start sharing an ethernet connection wirelessly, click the drop-down menu beside Share your connection from and select Ethernet, or Thunderbolt Ethernet if you’re using an adapter. Optionally, if you’re running the connection through a VPN, select the appropriate one in the drop-down menu instead of using ethernet. This will allow all traffic from other devices to also run through the VPN.

With the wired portion set up, check the box beside Wi-Fi. To add security to and change the name of your wireless network, click Wi-Fi Options in the bottom right corner of the window. The default channel is 11, but you can change it to whatever you’d like.

As for security, the only option available is WPA2 Personal. Unfortunately, OS X will not generate a password for you. The only requirements, though, are that it be at least eight characters in length — it doesn’t matter whether you have capital letters or numbers combined. When you’re finished configuring the network settings, click OK.

Step 3. Begin Broadcasting

After checking all those boxes and such, you’d think everything should be working properly. However, you have to actually enable Internet sharing first. To do this, check the box beside Internet Sharing in the menu to the left. You’ll be warned that Internet sharing may cause problems on your network if other computers are connected to it, but if you are sure everything will be okay, click the Start button to begin broadcasting. I don’t recommend connecting your computer to a router or port switch and broadcasting wirelessly because the signals can get mixed up.

Option 2. Sharing Internet to a Wired Device

Sharing your wireless connection to a wired device is much more simple than doing things the other way around. Once you’ve connected the host computer to the one that needs Internet, it’s a quick seven-step process.

Sharing Internet to an Xbox 360

Begin Connecting

Finally, that old rusty computer can be brought out of the closet. You can install Linux (I suggest Ubuntu) on it and bring the little thing back to life without buying a WiFi card or anything.

Likewise, you can make your home completely wireless using your Mac as the router — they’re good and they save you quite a bit of money. In the comments below, let us know if you have any questions, and tell us what you’re using Internet sharing for.

How To Use a Mac To Connect To Another Mac Remotely

Via Remote Desktop, SSH, or third party apps

If you need to access your Mac, but you can’t get to it in person, you should consider using macOS’ built-in remote access tools. You can connect to another Mac remotely from the terminal using a Secure Shell (SSH) connection, by using Mac screen sharing, or through the Apple Remote Desktop service for system administrators.

There are also third-party options you can consider, such as Teamviewer, but the built-in options that macOS provide should be all you need to connect to other Macs. If you want to connect to another Mac remotely, here’s how to do it using these methods.

Setting Up macOS Remote Access Tools

Before you can connect to another Mac remotely using the built-in Screen Sharing tool, you’ll need to enable remote access to it in your Mac System Preferences. You’ll also need to follow these steps if you want to access a Mac remotely using SSH or to use the Apple Remote Desktop tool.

Most users will want to use the macOS Screen Sharing option, which uses the open-source Virtual Network Computing (VNC) protocol to create a remote desktop connection. For non-screen access, enabling SSH access will only allow you access to your Mac from the terminal.

If you want to control multiple Macs in a business environment, you’ll probably want to enable Remote Management instead of Screen Sharing to allow for more control over your Mac, including the ability to change system settings.

To add or remove other users from this list, press the + (plus) or – (minus) buttons in the Allow access for options under the Screen Sharing tab. Alternatively, press the All users radio button to enable remote access for all user accounts on your Mac.

Once these settings are enabled on your Mac, you can then connect to it from another Mac using the built-in Mac Screen Sharing app or the paid Apple Remote Desktop tool, using a third-party VNC viewer, or by using the ssh command at the terminal.

How To Connect To Another Mac Remotely Using Screen Sharing

How you connect to your remote Mac will depend on the option you enabled in the Sharing menu of the System Preferences app. To connect to another Mac with Screen Sharing enabled, you’ll need to launch the Screen Sharing app.

If the connection is successful, your remote Mac desktop will appear in a new window for you to access and control.

If you’ve enabled the Remote Management setting and wish to use that to connect to another Mac remotely, you’ll need to purchase the Apple Remote Desktop tool from the App Store to establish a connection instead.

Connecting To a Remote Mac Using SSH

The Secure Shell (SSH) protocol allows for remote terminal connections. If you enabled the Remote Login setting, you should be able to make an SSH connection to your remote Mac using the built-in SSH client on your second Mac or another device with an SSH client installed.

If the connection is successful, you can then begin controlling your remote Mac using Mac terminal commands. Once you’re done, type exit to disconnect.

The Best Tools for Remote Connections on macOS

Thanks to these options, you can connect to another Mac remotely using another Mac or any other device with a VNC or SSH client installed. You can use your Mac to control other devices, too, as it’s possible to control Windows PCs using the Windows Remote Desktop for Mac software.

Outside of these built-in tools, there are plenty of third-party remote desktop apps you can use to take control of your devices remotely, like Teamviewer or Chrome Remote Desktop. Let us know your favorite method for Mac remote desktop connections in the comments below.

Ben Stockton is a freelance technology writer based in the United Kingdom. In a past life, Ben was a college lecturer in the UK, training teens and adults. Since leaving the classroom, Ben has taken his teaching experience and applied it to writing tech how-to guides and tutorials, specialising in Linux, Windows, and Android. He has a degree in History and a postgraduate qualification in Computing. Read Ben’s Full Bio

Создание сети «компьютер-компьютер» на Mac

Чтобы настроить временное соединение Wi-Fi между Вашим Mac и другим устройством, можно создать собственную сеть, используя меню «Wi-Fi».

Создание новой сети

Нажмите значок состояния Wi-Fi в строке меню, затем выберите «Создать сеть».

Введите имя и выберите канал для сети.

Если создана сеть «компьютер-компьютер», значок меню Wi-Fi меняется на изображение компьютера . Новая сеть доступна в разделе «Устройства» в меню Wi‑Fi.

Подключение к сети

После того как сеть создана, Вы можете подключиться к ней с другого компьютера Mac.

Нажмите значок состояния Wi-Fi в строке меню и выберите нужную сеть.

Включение устаревших сетей

На Mac выберите меню Apple

> «Системные настройки», затем нажмите «Сеть» .

В списке служб слева выберите Wi‑Fi, затем нажмите «Дополнительно».

Установите флажок «Показать устаревшие сети и параметры».

Enable Internet Sharing in Mac OS X to Turn Your Mac Into a Wireless Router

Did you know you can turn your Mac into a wireless access point by using Internet Sharing? Internet Sharing works for nearly all versions of Mac OS X, from 10.6, to OS X 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X Mavericks, and beyond, and with internet sharing enabled, your internet connected Mac will broadcast a wifi signal that can be used by another Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, or whatever else you need to get online from.

Though it may sound like an advanced feature, internet sharing is actually really easy to set up on a Mac, and if you follow along you’ll have it working in no time at all, effectively turning a Mac into a wireless router.

If you’re wondering when and why this is so useful, here are some common situations where Internet Sharing is particularly helpful:

Hotels in particular have a bad habit of charging customers a per device fee rather than a single per room cost for internet access, using Internet Sharing gets around that greatly inflated expense.

The wired internet connection can come either from something like a hotel or office ethernet network, or even directly from a cable modem or DSL modem from a standard broadband provider. Once everything is up and running, you can connect many devices to the Mac’s signal just by connecting to it’s broadcast SSID (the router ID). It’s easy to set up, let’s get started.

How to Share Internet from a Mac to Other Computers & Devices

We’ll walk you through the process of setting up a secured wireless access point, broadcast from an internet connected Mac to be shared with other Macs, PC’s, iOS devices, or anything else:

You’re done. Your Mac is now broadcasting a wireless signal that can be picked up by any other wi-fi enabled devices.

Connecting to the Internet through the Shared Mac Wi-Fi Hotspot

Connecting to the Mac’s shared internet connection is now the same as connecting to any other wireless network, the process of which is generally the same for each device, though obviously it will be slightly different per operating system. Basically, all you need to do is treat the Mac’s broadcasted signal as any other wireless router: Find the wifi access point name you set (known as the SSID), enter the wireless password, and you’re online as if you connected to any other network.

Literally any wireless equipped device can connect to the Mac shared connection at this point, whether it’s another Mac, a Windows PC, linux box, XBox, Playstation 3, an iPhone, iPad, Android tablet, Apple TV, you name it, as long as it as wifi support it will treat the Mac broadcasting it’s signal just like any other router and won’t know the difference.

In terms of security, the network is relatively secure thanks to password set during the setup process, if you forgot that password you just have to disable security and re-enable it to set a new one. The newest versions of OS X support WPA2 encryption, adding even more security to the network, but older versions of Mac OS X offer WEP which, while certainly better than nothing, is less strong than WPA.

The Mac puts out a strong signal, but if you’re a perfectionist, you could then run the Wi-Fi Diagnostics tool and get the optimal signal for the network by reconfiguring the setup by rearranging things physically. For most purposes though, whether it’s in a brief hotel or airport usage situation, so long as the devices are fairly close enough together the optimization is less important, and you won’t need to worry much about getting things perfect.

Connect your Mac to the Internet

These days it’s easy to connect to the Internet from your Mac, whether you’re at home, at work or on the go. Two common ways to get online are by using a Wi-Fi (wireless) or Ethernet (wired) connection. If neither is available, you may be able to use an Instant Hotspot.

Use Wi-Fi

When a Wi-Fi network is available, the Wi-Fi icon is shown in the menu bar at the top of the screen. Click the icon, then choose a network to join. If a lock icon is shown next to the network name, the network is protected by a password — you’ll need to enter the password before you can use that Wi-Fi network. How to connect using Wi-Fi.

Use Ethernet

You can use Ethernet either through an Ethernet network or through a DSL or cable modem. If Ethernet is available, connect an Ethernet cable to the Ethernet port on your Mac, identified by this symbol . If your Mac doesn’t include a built-in Ethernet port, you can use an adapter to connect the Ethernet cable to the USB or Thunderbolt port on your computer. How to connect using Ethernet.

Use Instant Hotspot

If you don’t have access to a Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection, you may be able to use your Mac and Instant Hotspot to connect to the internet using the personal hotspot on your iPhone or iPad. How to connect using your iPhone or iPad.

At home, at work or on the go

When you’re at home: Your ISP may offer a Wi-Fi or Ethernet Internet connection. Check with your ISP if you’re not sure which type of access you have.

When you’re at work: You may have a Wi-Fi or Ethernet network connection available. Check with your company’s IT department or network administrator for details about how to connect to your work network, and usage policies.

When you’re on the go: You can use Wi-Fi hotspots (wireless networks that are open to the public) or Instant Hotspot on your Mac (if your Mac and your phone carrier support it). Keep in mind that some Wi-Fi hotspots require that you enter a password, agree to terms of service, or pay a fee to use it.