Screens 5 5.9.2 — Mac version

Screens 5 started life on my mate's iPad. He tapped a saved connection, his iMac's desktop filled the tablet screen, and he carried on editing a poster from the sofa. That's the promise: any Apple device steering any Mac or PC.

Skip the login screen with saved passwords

• Set up one‑tap password entry. Save your Mac's user password so you skip the login screen every time.
• Pick a display. If your Mac has two monitors, tell Screens which one to show. Handy when you only need the big screen.
• Switch between observe and control. Observe mode just watches; control mode lets you click and type.
• Use the Quick Connect widget. Added in version 5.9, it sits on your Home Screen for a single‑tap jump to a machine.
• Drag connections into a custom grid order. Put your most‑used machines at the top — no more scrolling past the old office iMac.

Getting other folk sorted

Screens Express is the companion app for helping a friend or relative. They download Express, you connect from your copy of Screens, and you can walk them through a settings panel or fix a print queue without driving across town. Adaptive quality keeps the session smooth even when their broadband is being moody.

Mirror Touch Bar controls from another Mac

The Touch Bar shortcuts are easy to overlook if your MacBook doesn't have one. Connect from a machine that does, and Screens mirrors function keys, brightness sliders and app‑specific buttons across the session. On any Mac, active corners let you flick the cursor to a screen edge to lock the session or pull up the connection list — set them once in preferences and they stay out of your way.

Before you disconnect, Screens can send a command to the remote Mac. Tell it to sleep, log out or run a short script. Saves the extra step of doing it manually once you're already closing the lid. And if you ever need to script your own launcher, the app speaks URL schemes that you can drop straight into a Shortcut or a plain text file.

A photographer's evening

A wedding photographer I know keeps her Mac Studio in the studio and heads home with a MacBook Air. She taps the Screens 5 torrent mac setup once — saved connections sync through iCloud — and her full Lightroom catalogue appears, edits and all. She flags client picks from the sofa, drags the exported JPEGs back to her laptop with the file‑transfer drag, and tells the Mac Studio to shut down before she disconnects. No remote‑desktop wrestling, just a quiet evening culling.

• iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27 and visionOS 27 support added.
• New 'Connect to Computer with Screens' action for Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight.
• Quick Connect widget lands on your Home Screen.
• Custom grid ordering by dragging connections into place.

• macOS 14 or later
• Works on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs