My Problem

I have a new Mac Mini running OS X Lion that I need remote access to. I’ve enabled “Screen Sharing” in Sharing Preferences, created a VNC password and ensured that Screen Sharing is allowed through the firewall.

Using various VNC clients, I receive different forms of bizarre errors and refused connections. In Remmina on Fedora 14, I cannot connect to the Apple VNC server. Either a connection is made and I see a very brief flicker of a remote connection before the window is closed or the connection perpetually hangs at the “Connecting…” stage.

Using UltraVNC on Windows 7 I receive the error:

Server closed connection

- the server running as application

My Solution

Edit your bit-depth settings in your VNC client (not on the receiving Apple computer). Change the bit depth to something other than 256 colors or 32-bit. For example, I can connect to the Mac’s VNC server using 15, 16 or 24-bit color depths. As soon as I choose 256 colors or 32-bit I am unable to make a connection.

I suppose Apple wants their GUI to be enjoyed in its full glory and 256 colors is just too shabby. 32-bit? Well, that’s not minimalistic enough.