Need to contact the Mac at home.

May 11, 2014 9:15 AM

We have a several Macs at home. We want to securely connect to any of them from outside of home, via other Macs or iPhone or iPad and pull off files or use the home computer via the remote Mac/iDevice if needed. Talk to us like we're not tech savy and tell us how to do this. All the macs are running 10.9.2.
posted by sock, the puppet to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

For Mac->Mac

Go to System Preferences.

Open the iCloud preference pane.

If you don't have an iCloud account sign up for one.

Sign into your iCloud account

Enable the "Back To My Mac" option (next to last choice)

Sign into the same iCloud account on the other Macs. You'll see your home computers in the sidebar of any Finder window, under "Shared". You can share the screen, or connect to get files.
posted by blob at 9:26 AM on May 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

For iPhone and iPad, I think DropBox is going to be of the many solutions, but as far as I know, there is no equivalent of Back to My Mac for iOS.
posted by blob at 9:27 AM on May 11, 2014

As others said, maybe "Back to My Mac" will work for you: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4907

It's free, and it's secure, but it doesn't work with iOS.

Back to My Mac uses these methods to protect your security:

IPSec and SSL encrypt and secure communication between your Macs and the Back to My Mac servers. Anything you transfer between Macs is protected.

Kerberos with digital certificates provide secure and trusted authentication to help verify identity. An added benefit: with Kerberos, you won’t have to enter your user name and password every time you connect to another Mac in your Back to My Mac network.

posted by jjwiseman at 9:28 AM on May 11, 2014

I use Screens to connect to my Mac remotely from my iPhone or iPad. Works well.
posted by good in a vacuum at 9:36 AM on May 11, 2014

I've used Splashtop Streamer to connect using an iPhone and iPad to my Mac. You can try it for free over a WiFi network, but for a couple bucks a year you can access it anywhere. It says its SSL.
posted by cacofonie at 9:38 AM on May 11, 2014

LogMeIn Central is going to be the least-hassle way to do this.
posted by Wild_Eep at 10:32 AM on May 11, 2014

I believe back to my mac is just VNC and there are plenty of VNC clients for iOS. The OS X Screen Sharing preferences panel simply enables VNC.
posted by epo at 11:08 AM on May 11, 2014

OS X "Screen Sharing" is just VNC. Back to my Mac is Screen Sharing + UPnP/NAT-PMP and iCloud as a central registry, to make it easier to connect through NAT, firewalls, etc.
posted by jjwiseman at 11:33 AM on May 11, 2014

TeamViewer will be your free bet.

LogMeIn went pay-only last month.
posted by reddot at 12:03 PM on May 11, 2014