OK, so here's the scenario:

You are working (or playing) on your cool new Mac when suddenly, you wanted to do something but you forgot how to do it.

You called your friend who's your free 24x7 IT Support person. You woke him/her up (it's 2am), explained your dilemma and said "It's a life and death situation, you have to help me!"

Your friend, wanting to go back to sleep very quickly, gave you some answers but it's all techno babble and you have no idea what (s)he was talking about!

"If only (s)he could show me....", you cried out loud.

Funnily, that's what I want to show you today.

Call it Share My Screen, Remote Desktop, Mac's TeamViewer, LogMeIn or whatever.

You just want your friend to show you how it's done and get on with your work / play, while (s)he just wants to get back to bed!

If both of you have iMessage set up on your Macs, then it's easy.

So here's what you do:

1) Go to "Messages" on your Mac.

2) Send your friend a message.

3) Then decide amongst yourselves who's going to be the "inviter" and who's going to be the "invitee".

4) Go to the heading of the conversation, i.e. where it shows the phone number or the name.

5) There are two ways you can do this.

Method 1: Right click on the name or phone number and you'll see this:

Method 2: Click on "Details" on the right hand side of the iMessage dialogue box and you'll see this.

6) In this example, you want your friend to see your screen, so you select "Invite to Share My Screen". (Obviously, if you want to see your friend's screen, you click "Ask to Share Screen").

7) Your friend will get a message on their screen asking for them to accept the request. Once they've responded to the request, they'll see your screen (or you see theirs depending who was doing the "asking").

8) By default, the "invitee" can only look at the "inviter"'s screen - no touching. But in our example, your friend wants to show you how something is done, so (s)he can use the Request Control icon to ask control your screen.

9) Once you approved the request, your friend will be able to control your computer remotely.

10) Don't worry, you can close the Screen Sharing window and (s)he will be booted out of the system.

Easy eh?

A Mac screen is worth 1000 words. (aka share your Mac screen without expensive tools) https://t.co/2qKzYRNPJ6 pic.twitter.com/IXM3pC7fcj
— Bevan Ting (@aByteofThePie) February 3, 2016