macVNC is a simple command-line VNC server for macOS.
It is based on the macOS server example from LibVNCServer which in turn is based on OSXvnc by Dan McGuirk which again is based on the original VNC GPL dump by AT&T Cambridge.
- Fully multi-threaded.
- Double-buffering for framebuffer updates.
- Mouse and keyboard input.
- Multi-monitor support.
You'll need LibVNCServer for building macVNC; the easiest way of installing this is via a package manager:
If using Homebrew, you can install via brew install libvncserver; if using MacPorts, use sudo port install LibVNCServer.
macVNC uses CMake, thus after installing build dependencies it's:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .
cmake --install .
As you might have Apple's Remote Desktop Server already running (which occupies port 5900), you can run macVNC via
./macVNC.app/Contents/MacOS/macVNC -rfbport 5901
In its default setup, macVNC does mouse and keyboard input. For this, it needs certain system permissions. It tells you on first run if these are missing; you can set up permissions via 'System Preferences'->'Security & Privacy'->'Privacy'->'Accessibility'. Note that if launched from Terminal, the entry shown will be 'Terminal', not 'macVNC'.
Note that setting a password is mandatory in case you want to access the server using MacOS's built-in Screen Sharing app.
You can do so via the -passwd commandline argument.
As its predecessors, macVNC is licensed under the GPL version 2. See COPYING for more information.